Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 41

An Interview with Elin Gregory

Welcome to Elin Gregory, an old friend but a new author. Elin has just had her first solo book published, and has all sorts of interesting things in the pipeline – I'm particularly looking forward to On a Lee Shore, and A Fierce Reaping. Elin and I seem to back opposite sides in history, but that just makes her ideas more interesting to me. She's one of those writers in whose historical accuracy I have complete faith, so I can read her books hoping to learn something, as well as to be entertained.

Enough blathering from me. I'll hand you over to Elin now:

~*~*~*~

Hello, Alex. Thank you so much for inviting me to your blog. It's great to be here.

1. What do you do when you're not writing?

I'm married with a live at home adult daughter and a very elderly parent living nearby so family matters take some keeping up with. Also I work 4 days a week in the local museum. Apart from that I read, a lot, dabble a bit with drawing and painting and never seem to do enough housework. Show me a creative person who has a perfectly spick and span house – I think most of us can think of more interesting things to do

2. What are you enjoying reading at the moment?

After saying nasty things about Diana Gabaldon's Crosstitch and getting recommendations from friends – actually I think it was you, Nan Hawthorne and Erastes – I bit the bullet and bought a £0.01 copy of Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. I was really surprised by the quality of it and was enjoying it a lot until Lord John started whimpering about that long streak of deus ex machina, Jamie Fraser. Now I'm growling "For goodness sake have some pride, man!" Other than that I have books to review and I am reading anything I can get my hands on re: 1920s London [Queer London by Michael Holroyd has a fund of stories] and 1940s agriculture [2 books by Charles Bowden about shepherding and working the land with heavy horses are proving to be most inspiring]. And there's other things too. I'm usually part of the way through one of my Terry Pratchetts. I picked up a battered copy of Nation last week on a stall in the covered market and adored it, but I need to read it again to take in the fine detail. That's usually where the greatest treasures lie.

3. Tell us about the books you have out.

THE book I have out Just the one, though I have a couple of stories in last years UK Meet anthologies, British Flash and Tea and Crumpet.

"Alike As Two Bees" is set in ancient Greece and revolves around a yardful of jobbing sculptors who are carving the fiddly bits for a rich man's house. The main protagonist, Philon, has a particular aptitude for carving horses and finds one perfect mare to use as a model. Her rider, Hilarion, isn't nearly as pretty as the horse but neither of them care. Both are happy souls most of the time. There are supporting characters, little bits of angst, humour, a healthy diet. I hope some people might like it. I enjoyed writing it and I hope that shows.

4. Who has been the biggest influence upon your work?

Ooh difficult question. There are several authors of gay lit whose work I marvel at, envy and would love to emulate. But, in general, Rosemary Sutcliff was a huge influence. I adore her characters, her plots, her style, her scholarship. She also wrote Sword At Sunset, the first book I ever read that had a positive depiction of gay characters. That things ended sadly for them, as was usual in books of that period, was a grief to me when I was about 10. Mary Renault is another favourite – don't think that's much of a surprise – and I love the way Dorothy Dunnett takes an historical period and milks it of every possible opportunity for drama. Also her hero – Francis Crawford of Lymond – is tough, funny, civilised, intelligent, and canonically sexually ambiguous. That he's utterly gorgeous doesn't hurt.

5. What works in progress have you got on the go at the moment?

LOL – too many! "On A Lee Shore" early 18th century pirates. "A Fierce Reaping" Dark Ages warfare set in Northumbria. "Eleventh Hour" – secret intelligence caper set in 1928 London. "The Long Secret Summer" – romance against the backdrop of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the shepherding year. Some are more advanced than others. The piratey one is almost finished.

6. While doing research have you ever done anything really exciting or

strange?

I've made chain mail. It's really boring and hurt my fingers. I've also worn it and that sucks too. No wonder the Normans were so stroppy. I'm married to one of the few men in Britain to have a framed certificate of Mastery from the Craft Guild of Bowyers and Fletchers on the wall, so I have a houseful of bow and arrows and used to shoot them regularly. It's a beautiful sport, very instinctive and calming. One day I'll write about medieval longbow men, but not just yet.

7. Do you ever suffer from writer's block? What do you do then?

I have a whole barrage of things to do but, honestly, blocks clear when they feel like it. It depends what's causing it. At the moment I have a back problem which means writing is uncomfortable. Can't do much about that. Otherwise Write or Die can be enough of a shock to get the words going again. Or a sufficiently strident beta reader. Or sometimes 'drawing' the story in comic book form. Hand writing on paper rather than typing is good. Skipping a 'hard' scene to do something else can help. If all else fails, I have a notebook with an over the top police procedural fantasy novel in it and I add a chapter to that. Writing something crazy that nobody will ever see is great fun and reminds me that I'm supposed to be enjoying the process.

8. Alpha males, do you – (a)love them? – (b)think they should be shot? Why?

I loathe alpha males in person. To often alpha male type of behaviour is diplayed by a form of boorish bullying that is horribly unattractive and threatening. But I do enjoy writing them, if you define alpha male as a supremely confident man who is certain that there's nothing about more bad ass than he is. Then, naturally, I prove that he's wrong! If I make an alpha character I like to give them hidden vulnerabilities. It's such great fun breaking down all that arrogance and confidence then building it back up again into something more moderate and benign.

9: How did you feel the day you held the copy of your first book in your hands?

Complete sensory overload! No really. I'd arrived at the 2011 UK Meet after an incredibly stressful morning and there it was – Tea and Crumpet, with a very friendly tea pot on the front and a mass of stories inside, including one of mine. Unbelieveable. I love ebooks – so convenient and so easy to store – but as a keepsake you can't beat paper! I particularly like having all the signatures of the authors. That was a lovely souvenit of a super day and I'm looking forward to the next Meet – 15th September, 2012 in Brighton – brilliant.

So questions answered and thank you very much for having me. Below there are some details about Beeeees!

Alike as Two Bees

By: Elin Gregory

Published By: Etopia Press

Published: Mar 02, 2012

ISBN # 9781937976194

Word Count: 19,664

Heat Index: mildly spiced – korma rather than vindaloo

Blurb:

Horses, love, and the tang of thyme and honey…

In Classical Greece, apprentice sculptor Philon has chosen the ideal horse to model for his masterpiece. Sadly, the rider falls well short of the ideal of beauty, but scarred and tattered Hilarion, with his brilliant, imperfect smile, draws Philon in a way that mere perfection cannot.

After years of living among the free and easy tribes of the north, Hilarion has no patience with Athenian formality. He knows what he wants—and what he wants is Philon. Society, friends and family threaten their growing relationship, but perhaps a scarred soldier and a lover of beauty are more alike than they appear.

Available from Amazon US and UK, ARe, B&N and Kobo.

An Amorality Tale for Small Birds

Having tucked The Pilgrims' Tale away in the airing cupboard, under a damp tea-towel to prove, I'm in between big novel projects at the moment. This is a dangerous position to be in. It means I may suddenly be seized by a desire to write yet another story about Loki, and none of us wants that.

This was the result of a prompt I saw somewhere I can no longer remember, which called for a story uniting these three elements: A campfire, a scream, and a lie that wouldn't stop growing. Come on, how could I not write a story about Loki and a giant chicken after a prompt like that? I had so much fun, I'm not even ashamed.

 

An Amorality Tale for Small Birds.

Sure as a single ant on the doorstep on Monday means an army of them in the sugar-bowl by Wednesday afternoon, whatever Loki chose was bound to lead to trouble.

So when they found themselves caught by swift sun-fall in a rocky country where even the cockroaches had starved to death, with an easterly wind blowing, and rain dripping down the backs of their necks, Thor did not complain. In fact he nodded to himself and grinned because he had just thought of something important, and that was an achievement he was proud of.

"Now I remember. The last time we did this, I said I wouldn't let you choose our path again."

"You did say that." Loki dumped the firewood he had been carrying into a pile and, taking off his cloak, he rigged up a small windbreak that sent the spray of the rain over the top of it. If one huddled close in its lee it was suddenly both drier and warmer. He lit the fire easily – it was a major talent of his, in downpour or under the sea, to always be able to start a cheery blaze. "I think you said it the time before, too. Yet here we are."

"Next time I will choose for us. You always have such bad luck." Thor drew closer to the fire and watched his companion rummage through their packs. He was always moving, Loki, as though he feared something might catch him if he stood still long enough, and in the yellow light he looked like a flame himself, red-topped, restless and hungry. "Why do you always have such bad luck, Loki?"

Thor had heard that some folk called him stupid, but he knew he was only slow, like the gradual piling up of dark cloud on the horizon. He arrived when he arrived, but when he did so, no one could say he was not definitely there. And although he was slow he had journeyed with his blood-uncle often and knew him, in so far as anyone could know the strange waif his father had brought home with him from Giantland.

So, rather than watch Loki's face – the expressions that were always slightly behind the thoughts in his burnt-black eyes – he watched the clever fingers. Leaning forwards, he closed one of his own palms around Loki's wrists and stopped him just as he was about to hide away the one piece of meat they had left.

Loki looked at the chicken drumstick in his hand as though it had formed there by strange arts, and then he smiled. "I thought I'd make dinner. There's a mouthful or two each on this. We can starve tomorrow."

But of course, if Thor had not stopped him, he would have taken the whole thing and eaten it himself while Thor was sleeping. Maybe he would have cooked it first, and maybe he wouldn't. That was just how he was, and nothing could be done to change it.

So Thor smiled back and said "Good idea. But you set up the camp, so I'll make the dinner. That's only fair."

"Of course," Loki's teeth squeaked together in frustration under cover of his grin.

Peeling one of the smaller twigs from the firewood, Thor pushed it through the meat, while Loki set up two forked sticks, one at either side of the fire, to hold the spit. Thor set it down between them, the drumstick in the flames.

And a hideous scream rang out in the barren country around them, now so dark that they – with their eyes dazzled by the campfire – could see nothing but blackness like hanging curtains. But surely it was not the ghosts of the dead cockroaches who screeched out there, with a long, blubbering clawing wail, like a cat being drowned in a copper bucket?

Loki froze, except his eyes, which darted to and fro like a rat in a box.

"You should go and see what that is," said Thor, turning the meat to let it brown evenly.

"Are you mad?" Loki was always sharper when he was unhappy. "It's some hideous monster. That's your territory. You should go."

"But if I go," Thor said, very reasonably, "you'll eat the meat and I won't get any dinner."

This was so true that after opening his mouth a couple of times to deny it, and shutting it again, Loki had to shrug and step out into the darkness.

If one was the kind of person to call World War Two 'a bit of a scrap' then in the same line, it would be fair to say that Loki had not had an easy life, despite all his efforts. And so when he had closed his eyes for five minutes to get his night vision back, he gave some serious thought to how he could get close enough to the shrieking thing to find out what it was without it devouring him. Which was why he was a bacterium when he saw it first and wafted away with his metaphorical heart in his metaphorical mouth. To a bacterium, the thing looked like a huge monster of a bird, somewhat in the shape of a chicken, but with a bright red eye and bright green wings and tail feathers like an explosion of fireworks.

He was so taken aback it took him milliseconds to work out the relative sizes of himself and the thing if he had been a man. But when he did, he turned back to his own form immediately, and laughed.

By his feet, the little green bird cocked its head and looked up at him knowingly.

"Was that you, screaming?" asked Loki.

"It was," replied the bird. "I screamed because it's my sister-son's bone you have put on your fire. Would you not scream if someone was about to eat your nephew?"

"I would probably pass the salt," said Loki, and his mouth all by itself curved into a grin. It was not so very small a bird as to fit in only one hand, but he could carry it in two. "What a good thing we're not talking about me. Listen, let me pick you up. I'll take you to the fire and you can retrieve your kinsman's bone."

But he was thinking, of course, that a whole bird is better than only part of one on the plate, and that when he had it in his hands he would crush its throat and add it to the evening meal. "I am eager to put an end to your terrible distress."

"Ha!" said the bird with an intonation of contempt in its harsh and shrill voice, "Wouldn't you like that? No, you'd just give me to Thor and he would kill me." It hopped backwards, and at each hop it swelled fourfold, so that when it was nine steps away it was the size of a three and a quarter year old Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Loki had been chased by enough of these in his time to be fairly accurate in his assessment.)

"You go and get the bone and bring it to me," the bird snicked its beak together like the crushing jaws of a waste disposal lorry. "And no treachery, mind."

Which just went to show that it doesn't matter how large you are – you can always get things spectacularly wrong.

Because after agreeing to do exactly as it said, with his face white with fear and his voice as high pitched as a boy band backing group, Loki scurried back to the fire more determined than ever that the chicken bone was his prize and he was going to have it to spite them all.

"Thor," he said, wringing his hands, "we mustn't eat the meat. That scream – it was a völva, horrified that we were about to eat meat that had been cursed. She said I should get you to bring it to her, so that she can remove the curse. She wants to meet you. Did I say she was very beautiful? It may have slipped my mind."

Thor, I believe I've said before, was not stupid, but he was not unkind either. So he just poked the drumstick with a knife until the pale juices ran and said "Nonsense. We mustn't be inhospitable. Go and invite her to come and sit by the fire and share our meal and our warmth. This is just getting nicely cooked."

So Loki, by now in a perfect state of mortal fear stepped back out of the firelight.  The very moment it saw he was empty handed, the monstrous bird's beak swooped down and caught him up. He screwed his eyes tight shut against the pain as it began to slowly try to grind him into two parts.

"Wait! Wait!" he screamed. "Let's do this more cleverly. You go round the other side of the hollow. I'll get Thor to run out here to me, keep him talking for a bit, and you can hop in, grab the bone and be gone by the time I've done. No one needs to be severed in half today, am I right?"

"Hm," the bird tilted its head and set him down almost gently on his feet. He straightened his tunic and patted down his sides, making sure all his ribs were still there.

"Very well. But if this doesn't work I really am going to swallow you whole, and you can spend the rest of your short life being dissolved in my stomach."

"No need for that," said Loki, and waited until it had made its ponderous way around the other side of the clearing, where Thor sat in the centre of an inverted bowl of light. Then he turned himself into a beautiful woman, with the head-dress and the golden plaques and the drum of a Lapland seer. "Help!" she shouted, "Help! Help!"

Thor jumped up and ran out, leaving the bone behind him on the fire. At the first sight of movement on the other side of the camp, Loki ran swiftly to meet Thor on the very borders of the darkness. "Thank the fates you're here," she said, taking the huge god's arm and turning him round. "Quickly, back into the clearing. There's a monster. It's been holding me captive and now it's trying to get you too. Quick, before it casts a spell on you."

This was the sort of thing that Thor had no trouble believing. So he turned back fast and saw the giant bird with its golden beak like Death's embroidery scissors and its burning red eye like the fires of Muspelheim just leaning down over the fire. It's shadow was like a hole in the world behind it.

It opened its beak – to curse him, he thought  – and he swung Mjollnir and crushed its skull with the satisfying bang and crackle of a packet of crisps being popped underfoot. The massive corpse landed in a scatter of gravel and small twigs, and Thor went back out to look for the pretty lady who had warned him of the danger, hoping to tell her that she was now free because of his brave deeds, and to humbly accept any reward she might be inclined to give him.

But the darkness was sadly free of enchanting women. All he found there was a bitter east wind and the sound of water on stone. Oh well, he thought. Who could blame her, after who knew how long in captivity in this harsh, unwelcoming land, for heading home as soon as she could? Shrugging resignedly, he returned to the fireside to find Loki there with the picked chicken bone in one hand and the other on the head of the dead monster, rather like a Victorian gentleman posing for a photograph by the carcass of his eighth white tiger, except without the huge handlebar moustache. He was sucking the last morsels of meat from his teeth and grinning.

Loki, of course, was gloating. Got it! Three of us fighting over it, and I got it.

But Thor, who wasn't aware he had been in a competition, gave a long-suffering smile in return and thought that his uncle had been looking strangely harried at certain points this evening. Peaky even. He had probably needed the food more than either of them would have been willing to admit. So things had turned out well in the end – might as well leave it at that.

"I see you've started without me," he said. "But no matter. There's plenty of meat on this thing for both of us. And plenty left over for the rest of the journey too. Help me butcher it and get a haunch on to cook, will you?" And that's what they did.

I can't tell you what the bird's reaction to this outcome was, not being privy to the afterlife arrangements of avians. All I can tell you is that it roasted beautifully, and that it tasted just like chicken.

HMS Albion identified in the real world!

I recently had a lovely email from Gert Alenhall, who is the person in charge of making and keeping the 18th century clothes of the mariners on the Swedish ship Götheborg. He also runs a business of his own, designing and making all kinds of costumes. Check out his website here www.ateljealenhall.se )

He said (I paraphrase) "I was very surprised to see the cover of your book, False Colors, because that's my ship on there, and I keep the archives of photos and don't remember that one."

I had no idea where the photo came from, as the cover was made by Larry Rostant and I had nothing to do with it, but I was simply amazed that it's a real ship at all. How lovely!

I'm not making myself clear, am I? But breaking news is that the ship at the bottom of this cover:

is this ship:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6theborg_%28ship%29

Here she is exchanging gun salutes with HMS Belfast on her way back home to Sweden after visiting London:

How cool is that? I would say "very" but I am biased

Publisher's Weekly reviews Under the Hill: Bomber's Moon

Well, the gist of this post is in the title. My lovely editor at Samhain, Anne Scott, emailed me this morning to say "Did you know Bomber's Moon has a starred review in Publisher's Weekly?" To which I had to sit down abruptly with the smelling salts (porridge actually) and calm myself before replying.

Publisher's Weekly, how about that? And under "Fiction" – not "m/m romance" or even "romance". Talk about mainstream

They say

Beecroft's writing dazzles, brimming with lush descriptions of worldly and otherworldly landscapes, taut conflict, and two finely drawn romantic leads… readers will delight in every moment of their adventure.

Full review here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60928-724-5

Coolness! *Doing the interpretive dance of speechless glee.*

Hwaet! A finished first draft.

Huzzah, and other, more period-appropriate, exclamations. The first draft of The Pilgrims' Tale is complete at 87,890 words. It opens with a scene a little bit like this:

only without the anachronisms and arrows, and carries on being less about war and more about music and gender-role confusion than is usual with me. It's probably the gentlest thing I've done so far (if you don't count the way my heroes meet up the second and third time, or the fate of the best friend, or the inability of Leofgar's lord to understand the word 'no.') That's either because I'm feeling old and tired at the moment, or it's because I wanted to show Saxon society when it was working, not when it was either falling apart under threat of invasion or gearing itself up to fight.

This is probably all wrong from a tension and drama POV, but my heroes are a professional musician/entertainer and a reluctant berserker. The gleeman would be in trouble in the middle of a war zone, and the berserker would have more pressing matters to attend to than to fall in love. Hence, peace.

I should really celebrate by going out somewhere nice – except that the car has broken down. Or by having a nice relaxing bath – except that a water main burst nearby last night and we still have no water in the house. Tomorrow then

I wrote 52,296 words of this since the girls went back to school on the 6th of January by making sure that I wrote at least 1000 words every week day. In practice I think I averaged about 1800 a day, with some sick days. Which is not quite as impressive as NaNoWriMo, (where I also only write on weekdays, and therefore need to write about 2,400 words a day) but is a lot more sustainable.

Now I think I will write that story about Loki versus the giant chicken, then do the first draft of a short novella, and thus give myself the time and space I need apart from this to come back to the second draft fresh.

Wonderful post on why 'was' is not a crime.

I occasionally also froth at the mouth about this subject, and have crossed one publisher off my list of 'people I will ever work with again' because they tried to take my wases away. But I have been too lazy/ill informed to ever write a proper post about why using the verb 'to be' does not constitute passive voice, why you can't just take it away without deforming the language – and why passive voice isn't always such a terrible thing anyway.

Fortunately for my laziness, Patricia C Wrede has written her own post about it, and it is wonderful. Have a look at this:

Misunderstanding grammar

~

On other news, I am having a bad winter this year, despite the lightbox and the vitamin D. I just got the SAD sorted out when my hormones decided to pack it in. I'm still managing to do my 1000 words a day on The Pilgrims Tale, but I went to the doctor today to talk about HRT and this conversation sums up my current level of enthusiasm for life.

Dr: Are you enjoying anything in your life at the moment?

Me: No.

Dr: I see you're a writer. Are you enjoying that?

Me: No.

(OTOneH, did he really have to ask the same question twice? The first answer clearly implies the second. OTOH, I may not be the easiest of patients to squeeze useful information from.)

Which is a way of saying that I may be blogging less frequently, or less lengthily for a while. If I'm going to make a point of carrying on doggedly with something I'm not enjoying, it's going to be the writing rather than the talking. (Even if the talking is done via text.)

How to make a simple book cover in one easy lesson.

With the self publishing boom showing no sign of going away, I thought it might be a useful thing to do a tutorial on the making of simple book cover art. Like everything, making cover art can be as easy or as hard as you choose to make it, and while getting a professional cover artist in may be the ideal, paying for professional cover art may not be possible. If that's the case, you can still do a pretty good job yourself with some free programmes and a tenner or so spent at the stock photo sites.

First of all, go to http://www.gimp.org/ and download The GIMP. (This stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" and has nothing to do with leatherwear unless you want it to.) The Gimp is almost as powerful as Photoshop, more than capable of allowing you to make highly professional book covers, yet totally free.

It's also offputtingly complicated and has no user manual, but who cares about that, right?

So, today let's make a cover for a book which you are going to upload to Smashwords. Smashwords likes its book covers to be 800 pixels tall by 500 pixels wide. If you want to make a cover for Amazon, you'll need to check what dimensions they recommend and use those instead.

 

Once you have the gimp installed, fire it up and go to

File>New

This will give you a box called "create a new image". Check that the little box on the right says "pixels." If it doesn't, scroll through the drop down menu and pick "pixels". Then enter 800 in the box that says "Height" and 500 in the box that says "Width" and click on OK.

This gives you a nice white rectangle of the right size and shape for a book cover. Now you just have to fill it in.

For your first attempts at cover art, I recommend you go looking for single dramatic images which catch the eye and have something (it doesn't have to be much) to do with your book's theme.

I'm going to make a cover for a murder mystery, which I've decided is going to be called "The Prodigal." It's about the crimes solved by a drifter who spends his life on the road, unable to find anywhere to settle that isn't stuffed full of secret sins.

What I do now is trawl through the stock photo sites, (canstockphoto, istockphoto, stock xchange, wikimedia) and find a really nice dramatic image. This stage can take days, but it's worth holding out for that one great picture, because it's the only really vital bit when you're making a cover as uncomplicated as this one.

I've chosen this picture:

which I bought and downloaded from istockphoto.com

Now go back to gimp and open your picture using the File>Open menu.

Right click in the middle of your picture, and from the drop down menu you get, select Edit>Copy.

Go back to your blank white rectangle (the one which is going to be your cover,) right click on that and select Edit>Paste

Now go up to the top and click on Layer>New Layer.

This basically pastes your picture onto your book cover. However, the chances are that it is not yet the right size. So go to

Layer>Scale Layer, and in the box type 800 in the box for Height and press OK. This will make your picture fit the height of your book cover, though it may mean that bits of the picture are too wide and hang over the edges. This is a good thing, as it means you can move the picture layer around until it looks really cool.

To move the picture layer around, go to the "Toolbox" box and click on the button that looks like a cross with arrowheads. This is the "Move" tool. Once you've clicked on it, put your cursor anywhere in the picture, hold the left mouse button down, and you can pick up and drag the picture wherever you want.

I've decided to go for a slightly asymmetrical look, while making sure I kept the lightning:

Now all I have to do is add the text. I always think it is nice to pick colours from the picture for the text, that way you don't stand the chance of having one of those covers where the text looks as though it was pasted on from and entirely different book. We want the title and author name to look as if it belongs together with the picture, so let's pick colours for them by using the "Colour Picker Tool". This looks like a little eyedropper and can be found in the 'toolbox' box.

Now, we want the text to look like it belongs, but we also want it to stand out and be easy to read. I'm assuming I'm going to put the title up in the dark clouds at the top, so I want the text to be in a contrasting colour to the clouds. I think I'll try either the white of the lightning strike or the yellow of the sun.

So, I click on the eyedropper symbol, and after that I put my cursor on top of the middle of the yellow sun and click. If I look over on the toolbox again, I see that where the two boxes at the bottom were once one black and one white, the upper one has now turned a bright yellow. This is the colour that the eyedropper picked up from the picture. The top box is the foreground colour – or the colour which the Gimp will use for any text or painting or airbrushing you might do.

I'm not sure how sinister that very bright yellow is, but let's try it.

To put text on your picture, go to the text tool which looks like an 'A', and click on it. Now click on your picture and you'll get a little box that says "GIMP Text Editor." Type your book title in there and it will simultaneously show up on your picture.

The chances are it will be too small. So go over to the toolbox, and where it says "Size" click on the up arrow until you think it's big enough.

Above the 'size' box is a box that says "Font". Click on this to see a drop down menu of different styles for your lettering. You'll need to experiment with selecting different fonts and adjusting the size to fit before you come up with something that you think you like.

This is a case of personal preference, so I can't do more than say you should bear three things in mind for the title:

1. It should be decorative

2. It should be eyecatching

3. It should be easy to read.

It's no good going for the coolest font ever if nobody can read what it says, but you don't want a font that says "God, this book is boring" either. Use your judgement. Also, you don't have to use the same font, or the same colour for every word in the title. Here I've decided that the yellow is a bit too cheerful to use for the whole thing, so I've picked the colour from the lightning for the main word, and just used yellow for "the." By all means, emphasize the most important word in the title by making it bigger than the other words.

Each time you want to add a word you will have to do it by clicking on a different place in the picture, bringing up the text editor and typing only that word into the box. You can then move the separate words around separately because they are on different 'layers' of the cover. Press control + L to open up the layers dialogue so you can see which word is on which layer, then just highlight that layer by clicking on it, and you will be able to move that layer around independently of the others using the move tool.

Once you've got the title sorted out, it's a case of more of the same for the author's name. My advice for this one is that – unless you are a best selling author with a well known name – your author name should be more modest than your title. Choose a more subdued colour and simpler font, and make it smaller.

Type it in, move it around until you're happy with where it is, and you're done. Save the file both as examplename.jpg and examplename.xcf The xcf extention is Gimp's own file type, and allows you to save all your layers separately. This means you don't need to re-do the whole thing every time you want to change something, so getting into the habit of always keeping the xcf will save you lots of grief down the line. I speak from bitter experience!

OK, here is my finished version:

It is simple, but I only promised simple! I still quite like it, though. I could live with that, particularly if it saved me the $100 or more I might have had to pay for someone else to make it for me.

Next time, if anyone's interested, some slightly more complicated things you can do, if simple doesn't cut your mustard.

Woo! First review of Under the Hill!

Wow, the Under the Hill books have just had their first review and they're not even out yet. What's even more exciting is that it's a good one, and it's by Library Journal Reviews, so I guess I can keep my fingers crossed for the books to be available in a few libraries once they're out. After all the furore about RWA recently, it's also nice to see them listed with two m/f romances and no attempts at segregation at all.

The review is by Kristi Chadwick and concludes "From World War II to Faerie, ghosts to dragons, war to romance, there is a little bit of everything in these books. Beecroft (By Honor Betrayed) weaves together a wonderful pair of books with interesting characters and more than enough twists to keep the reader surprised until the end. …. Those who enjoy complex fantasy stories with nontraditional pairings will enjoy this ebook duo."

Full review here.

Huzzah! Thank you Kristi. It's always scary waiting for the first review and wondering whether it's going to be good or bad. I'm really relieved to have it so successfully behind me before I'd even started to worry

UK Meet 2012

Hold these dates!

September 14th – 16th 2012

will see the third annual UK Meet for readers/writers/reviewers/fans of GLBTQ fiction.

There will be a full day of programmed events on Saturday 15th, plus social events on Friday evening and Sunday morning.

Full press release, with details of where, what and how to book, goes live Friday 24th Feb.

Call for submissions for linked anthology "Lashings of Sauce" goes live Friday 2nd March.

UK Meet team (Jo, Jamie, Clare, Alex and Charlie)

UK GLBTQ Fiction – Read it, Write it, Love it

Author voice versus Book voice

I share many of my own characteristics with my characters – if they have my paranoia or my faith it gives me a sort of trap door into their minds through which I can get in there and rummage around to see what else there is.

I may have mentioned before that the particular aspect I gave poor Conrad from By Honor Betrayed was my decision making process. Like him, I can't help revisiting every thought, decision and action endlessly, trying to make sure I've seen all the possible angles, been as fair as I can be, guessed as many of the reasons behind [whatever] and attempted to predict any and all consequences from any and all possible actions.

This makes it hard to say anything with certainty, and means I often end up coming back and semi-contradicting what I said earlier. And ever since I posted that post about finding your author's voice, I've been plagued by the thought that I might not have covered the full complexity of things.

Firstly, I stand by my opinion that you don't need to go looking for your 'authorial voice'. I still think your over-all style, the thing that makes your writing yours and when distilled smells of "essence of Beecroft" (not honestly a thing that sounds terribly attractive) is something you don't have to go looking for. It will turn up on its own as you write and continue to write.

However (there's always a 'however') I do think it's important to point out that each individual book has a voice, and that does need to be found.

If I'm writing a book set in the 18th Century, I write in a different way to how I write contemporary. Because I'm a very instinctive writer – I do stuff without knowing why I do it – I didn't really notice this fact until I started writing A Pilgrims' Tale. When I wrote Shining in the Sun, I knew that something in me rejoiced in the ability to run wild and free with characters who were suddenly allowed to utter elegant sentences such as "Oh fuck you, you fucking wanker!" And to be able to use words like "psychiatrist" and "aspirin" and "Volkswagen." That was terribly exciting, but I didn't really give it a second thought until I had to shift gears again and start something Saxon.

A Pilgrims' Tale is set in early Anglo-Saxon England, in the days when the English Language looked like this:

þær ic ne gehyrde
butan hlimman sæ,
iscaldne wæg.
(There I heard naught but the roaring sea, the ice-cold wave.)

And to me it seemed obvious that I couldn't possibly use the same 'voice' for a story set in the 8th Century as the voice I used for the 18th or the 21st. The way people use language says so much about their attitudes and their beliefs that to use modern language for the past, or historical language for the present sounds ridiculous and falsifies the way people think.

When I read the journals of an 18th Century writer, I'm always struck by the careful but confident elegance of the way they express themselves. You can feel the spirit of the age in them – in the way that they make such an effort to be civilized, urbane and delicate – and yet keep slipping into roaring, lively vulgarity. They're a noisy, self-confident people with lots of animal vitality who are trying to tame themselves for the sake of civilization. And if you can get all of that from the way they express themselves, then the writer can get all of that across to the reader simply by allowing the book to speak in the same way. (Or at least, as close as you can get without losing your modern reader altogether.)

But when I read Anglo-Saxon poetry I get something very different. Although the undercurrent of lively vulgarity is still there, the overcurrent (so to speak) is in a much more minor key – it's melancholy but strong. It laments the hardships of the world and finds consolation in reputation and shield-brothers, in a good lord and the possibility of doing the right thing. It's fatalistic and – if not despairing – it is resigned to the futility of everything in this world and the inevitability of death.

Somehow, using a language that has changed so much from its Old English roots that you need dictionaries and grammars to translate it, I have to find a voice for this book which captures something of the proud, grim, beautiful act of endurance that was life in Saxon days. I have to find a voice for this book which is different from my 18th Century voice, and different again from my contemporary one.

How to do that?

For me the first step is always reading what the people of the time have written. You really can't get into their heads in any other way. No amount of looking at grave goods or reading text books can substitute for reading the actual people's actual words. How else would we know that the Saxons were plagued with thoughts that the days of glory were gone, the ancient works of giants were destroyed and they were living in a mean little post-apocalyptic world where nothing would ever be as good again?

Dagas sind gewitene,
ealle onmedlan
eorþan rices;
The days are gone of all the glory of the kingdoms of the earth;

How else, too, would I know how they expressed themselves, and be able to take elements of that to use for myself?

Once I've read a lot of original source documents (even if it has to be in translation) the way they express themselves will begin to sink in. With the Saxons I notice that the words are simple, but the phrases alliterate, and the whole thing has a beat like a drum. I notice the tendency for certain sentences to sound a bit like proverbs – and I remember that outside the monasteries this is an oral culture, so people need mnemonics to help them remember things. There's a heaviness, a portentousness there. These are serious-minded people.

And all of that is stuff I can do myself. So when I started writing A Pilgrims' Tale, I deliberately chose simple words with English roots over complex words with French roots. (My characters 'turn thoughts over' rather than 'consider' or 'cogitate' or even 'reflect'.) My scop (bard) character has a tendency to speak in alliterative verse – because he's been so highly trained and memorised so much of it that that's how he thinks. And everyone has a tendency to offer each other gnomic pieces of advice, and faintly regret that they weren't born in a more splendid time.

The result of which is that A Pilgrim's Tale will have a very different 'voice' to anything I've done before. It'll still be my authorial voice, but it'll be what my voice sounds like when speaking about the Saxons. The book voice will be different, whatever makes me me (and therefore my author voice) will be the same.

Here endeth my needless complication on the idea of 'voice'