Darryl Donaghue's Blog, page 3

Review – Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

I’m going to start reviewing books on here as and when I finish them. The first will be Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes and the second was supposed to be The Bat by Jo Nesbo, but I couldn’t finish it (which is review enough!).

After that, I’m going to focus on self-publlished authors. There’s a lot of good self-published books out there and I haven’t read nearly enough of them. Writing reviews helps me think about my own writing, helps form thoughts about what I like and don’t like both in plot and style.

Mr Mercedes follows retired Detective Bill Hodges as he confronts an unsolved case from his past – The Mercedes Killer. Back when Hodges was in the force, general nutcase Brady Hartfield stole a Mercedes and drove into a crowd at a local job fair, killing eight and wounding fifteen. He was never brought to justice and is now taunting Hodges, goading him whilst planning his next major crime, with his sights set on a far bigger body count.

The book is the first in an upcoming trilogy of crime fiction stories by American writing machine Stephen King. King is mostly known for his horror stories and, as creating suspense, tension and driving plots are key tenets in those, I imagine it was an easy transition. Mercedes has no paranormal elements, but does have its fair share of these other trademark features.

Hartfield is a rather down to earth villain. There isn’t anything remarkable about him, which makes him a more frightening antagonist. He is a young man who is bitter at a system and society he blames for his problems. Hartfield’s story unfolds as an origin tale of a disenfranchised modern male massacrist (that is definitely a word – there’s really no need to look it up).

Whereas our villain makes for an interesting character study, I felt Hodges was plucked from the Crime Fiction box of templates. Now, Crime Fiction characters can often be a cliche bunch and they, in general, suit the kind of gritty narrative required for these types of stories. Retired cop, check. Having to circumvent procedure, check. Unstable relationship to women and drink, check. It’s important to expand on these archetypes and offer something new – Hodges doesn’t really manage this.

Despite this, King’s storytelling is as strong as ever. The story builds slowly and gets all its players in place before the suspense-laden finale. Overall it’s an enjoyable read and tells a very modern story with a very plausible premise. Hartfield is an everyday villain who is wonderfully explored throughout the book and Hodges, albeit a little bland, suits the story well as our hero. King provides such a realistic and contemporary setting for the story, that it could be something you’d read about in the news one day, making it all the more chilling.

Editorial Feedback Returned!

I received my editorial feedback report from the Literary Consultancy recently. Three drafts felt like the right time to court some expert advice on the story structure and I’m certain I’ll look back on it as the best investment I’ve made in my writing career.

I’ve never had any impartial feedback on my work. My friends have read some and I’ve had three short stories published. I’d say my friends are fair, and I specifically asked them for firm feedback, but there’s always that thought they’re holding something back, out of genuine, if unintentionally poisonous, politeness. The short story publications were a great achievement, but they didn’t come with any feedback or opinion on the piece except, of course, that they liked them; liked them enough to think their readers would too.

For me, submitting my novel for a manuscript assessment was simply part of the writing process. I knew I was going to need a pair of professional eyes on it if I was going to produce something worth publishing. I know some authors skip this phase, either in the hope of saving money or they don’t believe it’s needed. I’m just not talented enough to do that and I doubt I ever will be. In fact, I’m willing to bet very few are.

I didn’t know what to expect from the report. The feedback was very impressive. It was turned around in ten working days and was fourteen pages of detailed, specific advice. It was encouraging and offered great suggestions for raising the standard of my writing in preparation for the copyediting phase. I knew there would be numerous learning points (if there weren’t, I’d have questioned the reader’s aptitude for the task). My biggest concern was that I’d be told it was a dead loss and never to set foot, or fingertip, on a keyboard again, which thankfully wasn’t the case. There were some glowing compliments, the reader liked my main character and said the book offered a fresh take on the genre. All the suggested improvements were highlighted, justified with good reasons and came with clear directions on improvements.

Good points included:

‘I enjoyed your book. It’s good to have an inexperienced, female officer take the lead and I hope she won’t get overshadowed by the senior and more established officer in the rest of the series. I think she brings a freshness and honesty to proceedings and in Sarah you’ve created a well drawn and engaging character.’

and

‘What I particularly like is that you’ll be reversing the usual scenario where the older, more experienced officer is the lead character and by focusing on the younger, less experienced, fresher character you have something new and different to offer.’

And, of course, in the interests of transparency, here are some of the areas for improvement:

‘There are times when [the POV] drifts all over the place, changing mid-paragraph on occasion and then moving again after a single sentence…Constant shifts can confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, break the mood and also destroy the reader’s connection with the character.’

and

‘You have a tendency to suddenly spring a reference to a new character onto the reader without any context or explanation.’

Whoopsie!

I’d recommend a structural review to anyone. I was a little nervous about it – it was the first time I’d let the manuscript out to be read by someone else. If you’re not nervous about the first time someone else reads your work, maybe you haven’t put enough of yourself into it. My book was happy curled up in my imagination, having me tickle its belly every so often, so it snarled a little when I took it by the scruff and flung to the dogs. Turns out, the Literary Consultancy far from tore it to pieces. They took good care of it from the start and returned it healthier and happier than ever, suggesting it needs just a little more daily exercise before it’s ready for the wild.

If you’d like to know more, tweet me or comment below. What are your thoughts on structural edits? Does it bring value to your book, or is it something you can cover with free beta readers?

Thoughts on Genre

This answer is so straightforward, I may be about to write my shortest blog post to date. My series involves a Police Detective solving crimes….drum roll…..Police procedural. Are we done? Time to put the kettle on already? Of course not…

I hadn’t considered genre until I was about to send the manuscript to an editor. To me, anything involving an investigator, Police or otherwise, chasing a villain should be filed under Crime fiction. Sci-fi was in space and romance took place in the moments before lovers kiss. Erotica took place in moments after lovers kissed and historical fiction before any of us can remember.

It turns out, like so much in this self-publishing journey, I had a lot to learn. Cozy crime fiction isn’t the sort you read under a blanket on a bitter winter’s eve and hard boiled has nothing to do with how you like your eggs.

Here’s some bullet points to help clarify the various crime sub genres as well as to break up the text making the post easier on the eye, which apparently is a good thing:

Whodunit - The author leaves clues along the way, enticing the reader to deduce the killer prior to the finale. My book fits this nicely.

Locked Room Mystery - The crime is committed under impossible circumstances. I’ve got a little of this too. A dash rather than a dollop.

Cozy - Limited or no violence, sex and bad language where the crime is investigated by some nosey Nana in a small village (mostly).  It’s safe to say, my novel would never be considered a cozy. I do like the word though. Cozy.

Police Procedural – The protagonist is a Police officer. Tick.

Hard Boiled – Generally associated with American authors. If a cozy had a shadow, it would write Hard boiled. I’ve got some grisly violence, so maybe it’s medium boiled.

Legal Thriller – Lawyers solving crimes. I don’t see these taking off…

Caper stories – Told from the criminal’s point of view. Nope, none of that in my book, but I’ve toyed with the idea as a standalone story.

Howcatchems  – The reader is given the identity of the killer first and the story follows the Detective’s path to solving it. I don’t reveal my killer early, well, not intentionally anyway.

There’s probably far more sub-genres than this and, of course, you can always start your own. Whilst writing, I paid little attention to genre. It’s not important at that stage of the process, in fact I’d say it can be rather limiting. Each genre comes within its own tropes and traditions and if you worry too much about fitting in, your individuality may suffer (just like being back at school).

Genre certainly helps at the marketing stage. A book cover designed with genre in mind  instantly informs a reader of what’s inside and is often said to be on of the biggest influence on purchasing decisions. Designing a cover without considering your target audience may leave them feeling a little misled and disappointed. Feedback on my covers suggests they are borderline Crime fiction and Horror, so I’m looking at ways to send a consistent message about the content by studying the covers of crime fiction heavyweights.

So far, my book is looking like a medium-boiled, locked room, police procedural whodunit. Any takers?

A Journal of Sin submitted for editorial advice

A little while ago I posted an article assessing various editorial services in preparation for my first novel’s structural edit. I’ll be self-publishing ‘A Journal of Sin’ later this year and decided to go for a developmental manuscript assessment and a copy-edit once I’m happy with the content. I say later this year, it all depends on the advice I suppose. I’ll be happy with anything above ‘throw it away, burn the laptop and never touch a keyboard again.’

The first rather large British organisation (that will remain unnamed) I submitted the manuscript to, lost it. Not only lost it, but took two weeks to tell me about it and chances are wouldn’t have even done that had I not nagged them. I spurned their offer of a partial refund and opted for The Literary Consultancy instead.

TLC are a London-based organisation with an fantastic reputation for editorial and literary standards. I considered a lot of freelance options, but decided I liked the peace of mind of an organisation with a strong background in the industry. They have a quick turnaround service which guarantees the manuscript returned within ten days for an extra third of the price. I like connecting with people directly online and it’s a great way to find high quality and affordable services, but I don’t really know enough about all of this yet to take that risk. Once I’m a little more comfortable with what I can expect from an editor and what my money pays for, I’ll branch out a little further into the freelance world.

I am, of course, as nervous as toffee in a hammer factory about the feedback. I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure. It will. Be fine.

What Puts Readers Off Self-Published Books?

Another great post from Tara Sparling with sound advice for anyone considering self-publishing! Thanks for the info!

How I write – Planning and Plotting

Hello and welcome to the first in a five part series detailing the apps, service and sites I’m using to keep me firmly on the road to writing success. I’ve loved gadgets, gizmos and general geekdom since apps were called programs and the net was affectionately known as The Information Superhighway (seriously, who came up with that?!) and, as you’ll see, the sheer amount of useful services I’ve been using proves I not changed a bit since the heady days of dial-up.

On that point, living in South Korea affords me one of the fastest wi-fi connections in the world. I get 96mb at home and, thanks to an advanced digital infrastructure, I can connect to free wi-fi all over the city, including the subway system (on which I can also get phone signal). It puts London, my hometown, to shame. All these internet waves flying through the air allow me to use all of the apps below on my laptop, phone and tablet, making me far more productive than I’d be just working from home.

Evernote – Reference and Notetaking
‘Ideas are like butterflies; they may land, but they soon take off again. Write them down!’ 
- Brian Seaward, Managing Stress.

That sounds like something Winnie the Pooh would say. Most of my ideas tend to come when I switch my brain off. I’m not sure if it’s a common phenomenon, but my ‘muse’ tends to turn up at the most inconvenient times; when I’m in the gym, on a night out, teaching in the classroom etc. Thankfully, I always have Evernote in my pocket to jot down a little reminder in one of the notebooks, so I don’t forget something could develop into a masterstroke of an idea. Evernote then syncs to my other devices allowing me to work on the idea the next time I fire up my laptop.

Evernote helps to organise your notes and documents into notebooks (folders) and notes like so :

Notebooks can be filed under other notebooks to make related ‘stacks’ and each note can be tagged to allow for even faster searching. Notes can be comprised of text or other file types and, outside of writing, I use it to organise invoices, scanned copies of other documents amongst other things. I use the Premium version (which I luckily got a year’s free subscription to via O2) allows document sharing, handy if collaborating with other authors or cover designers, and offline notebooks in case you’re not living in a cloud of fluffy, pink internet bliss like me. I’d say the free features are enough for most users.

Evernote works well with a number of other apps, including this one…..

Penultimate – Sketching
‘All art is but dirtying the paper delicately,’
- John Ruskin, The elements of drawing.

 Not it isn’t; sometimes it’s but smudging your tablet until you have something that resembles the thing you hoped it would. Penultimate, one of Evernote’s sister apps, allows me to ‘draw’ (for want of a better phrase) something resembling an aspect of my novel, like so:

Someone’s been murdered amongst those scribbles!

This is a very basic sketch of an area from ‘Redback,’ my second novel. I’ll add locations as they come up in the book and my artwork will only improve with practice! The annotations are done with another program, ‘Skitch’, which is useful for adding arrows, emoticons and text to various file types. I use a stylus with it, which make it far easier to work with than trying to use my clumsy fingers; years of playing video games as a teen rendered them useless for anything remotely artistic. Incidentally, some people use stylus’s like these to write notes on their tablets, but I find this far too unwieldy. Penultimate allows me to save my drawings, alongside my text notes in my Evernote notebooks and cuts out having to use pen and paper and scan it all in.

Mindnode – Organising thoughts
‘Do one thing everyday that scares you.’ 
- Eleanor Roosevelt

That quote doesn’t have anything to with Mindnode; I just like it. Unless, of course, you’re scared of spider diagrams. They’re rarely called that anymore, probably due to the difficulty in marketing something named after creatures most of the world has a phobia of. They’re often called brainstorms, ‘thought showers’ or mind maps. Every so often, as with most things, some clever marketing type will rename it and sell essentially the same product under a different heading. I don’t know about you, but given the choice between being showered in other people’s thoughts or trying my luck with the spiders, I’ll take a slice of Tarantula tart to go.

Mindnode allows you design diagrams featuring topic hubs that develop off into various tangents and help you see your ideas develop in a very visually appealing way. As ever, a picture paints a thousand words, so here’s my initial plan for the first six months of the website (you’ll have to open it in a new tab to have a proper read):

I’ve deliberately omitted prices from the posts in this series as they are in no way intended as a sales pitch, or even to push you in any particular direction with regards to the way you work. I like these kinds of thing as I’m a bit geeky, maybe a little pretentious with my overuse of gadgets, but do genuinely find them useful. In reality, the essential, barebones features of the apps above can be replicated with a pen and paper. Authors far superior than I have produced works that shook the world with just those two simple tools. The mental processes, techniques and methods presented are more important than apps used to produce them.

It’s been a brief rundown as I know you’re busy, eager to return to your blossoming manuscripts or half-finished chapter in your latest page turning purchase, so if you’d like any further detail on anything above, post a comment below and I’ll answer as best I can.

If you’re looking for more plotting inspiration, check out this fun and informative article by @theryanlanz on plotting styles.

What apps do you use? Prefer pen and paper to today’s tech? Maybe you paint the feet of local squirrels and let them run around your driveway until they spell out that perfect opening sentence?

Let us all know below. There’s no judgement here!

What Makes People Buy Self-Published Books?

This is a fantastic and informative article by Tara Sparling on what influences purchase decisions in the self-published market. This is another great blog I’ll be following; thanks for working so hard to bring us great information.