Richard Dee's Blog, page 71

Blog Hopping. Who’s your friend?

Welcome to another BlogHop, with #OpenBook, here’s this week’s prompt.

As a writer, what would you choose as your
mascot/avatar/spirit animal?

Another interesting prompt, at first I thought that I wouldn’t join in this week, as I couldn’t really visualise anything, plus I’m in the middle of NaNoWriMo and had already decided that I didn’t have enough time. But, do you know what, as I was walking around the cliffs near my home, I had an idea and a realisation that I could write something appropriate. Not only that, the change from my project would probably do me good. I expect that, as usual, I’ve written something completely different to everyone else on the hop, we’ll just have to wait and see.

So here goes.

The picture that currently defines who I am as a writer is the logo that I designed for my publishing imprint. I called it 4Star Scifi in honour of my wife and three daughters, my four stars. But I want one of the cartoon pictures that I see all around, it’s on my list of jobs.

What about a mascot, a writer that represents the way I like to see my work?

When I was a lot younger, I read everything that Isaac Asimov produced. I particularly remember the original Foundation series; they were what got me into Sci-fi. Considering the fact that the first parts were originally published in the 1940s, they still feel incredibly up to date. For those of you that aren’t familiar, a particular favourite of mine in those stories was a character simply known as The Mule. He was a genetic aberration, born with the ability to read and alter minds. Asimov made him appear both threatening and vulnerable at the same time. Even better, he did it in very few words.

I guess the ability to describe a lot in a line or two was the thing that struck me most, it’s a skill that I try to emulate in my own work. He also flitted between stories, prequels and sequels, expanding the narratives in all directions. I found it great to read a lot novel about something that was only briefly mentioned but sounded exciting. It’s a trait that I seem to have acquired in the way I produce series, going forwards, backwards and even sideways with my characters.

I’m flattered to say that my writing has been compared to Asimov (blush) and, like a Mule I can be pretty stubborn, which is both a good and a bad thing. Asimov is a presence in my life, if it hadn’t been for him, I might never have written anything. As a consequence, I feel a certain affinity to his creations, to characters like The Mule.

I could adopt Asimov; or the Mule for that matter as my mascot without a second thought, although people do say that I look a (very little) bit like Terry Pratchett in my official author picture.

I expect you’re wondering if I claim to have the ability to read minds .

(I knew you were going to ask that… JOKE). It’s slightly off-topic but when has that ever stopped me.

The answer is no, but I can read the minds of my characters,
see their lives in my head. I watch what I can only describe as a detailed film
of their adventures with added emotional commentary. I wouldn’t claim to be an
author, I consider myself more like a reporter, an impartial observer and
chronicler.

I often wonder if what I see is really happening, in some
parallel dimension. Perhaps all stories are really just factual reports of actual
events, situations and lives. Of things which are even now occurring in worlds removed
from our own? Maybe we can pierce the veil between worlds and watch as life goes
on there. Who knows, there could be a person in some alien life, busily telling
his world what I’m up to right now. Maybe they are making a fortune publishing
it (or whatever their equivalent is).

And that’s food for thought. As is the fact that my wife claims that there is a presence in my study, she says that she can feel the energy of someone seated at the keyboard when she knows I’m somewhere else.

Who is it? Might it be my avatar? Or am I theirs?

I have no idea.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

I’ll be back on Thursday with another Showcase post, featuring an Indie Author with something to say. Please click the links to see the other great blogs on this hop.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

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The second Saturday of NaNoWriMo 2019

Welcome back to my trip through the NaNo projects of the past.

This time, I’m looking at 2016. I didn’t attempt NaNo in 2015, I was otherwise engaged in adjusting to life after work, as I mentioned last week. My shoulder required an operation in the end, an 8mm bone spur was removed. After six months off work. I decided to take early retirement, rather than have to retrain and re-certify for a job that I had been doing for forty years. Don’t you just love the system?

Ribbonworld, the subject of last weeks post, was actually published in November 2015. And I did write a novel in 2015, just not in one concentrated spell or as part of the NaNo challenge. A change of genre for me, it was a Steampunk adventure called The Rocks of Aserol.

I also wrote several short stories. Among them was one that I wrote as a bet. My wife had challenged me to write a female character, and to do a ‘woman-runs-away-from-it-all-and-starts-again-in-a-new-place’ type story, only set in space.

I thought about it and had an idea for a jilted woman, who reluctantly turns amateur detective when she is forced to, by circumstances beyond her control.

I named her Andorra Pett and based her on a combination of the character traits of my wife and my three daughters.

Several people saw the short story that resulted, Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café. It was published in my collection Flash Fiction. It went down quite well, my editor agreed with me and others that there was the basis of a full novel in what I had written. So, for NaNo 2016, I expanded it. The short story became Chapter One of the novel. I didn’t really have any idea where it would go, but the voices in my head were on top form and between us we produced what was one of the easiest books I’ve ever written. The ideas flowed and in the end, it actually turned into a cosy-crime, murder mystery.

Here’s the blurb.

Someone rather flatteringly called the story a mixture of Agatha Raisin and Miss Marple, in space. It made me feel proud to be compared to those two, who are favourites of mine. I also thought that was a rather catchy compliment, and now use it in my advertising. The story has been my most successful novel to date, which is great as I really enjoy writing about Andorra. She has turned out to be everything that my wife and daughters are; a fantastic person, unpredictable and enormous fun to be around.

A sequel, Andorra Pett on Mars, followed. In fact, it came from a piece of Andorra’s backstory and I just carried on writing it as soon as I had finished the first story. There is now a third, Andorra Pett and her Sister. I also wrote a short story based on an event in her childhood, called Are We There Yet? I have an idea for a fourth adventure too, at the moment it’s called Andorra Pett takes a Break.

I usually just share the short story with people, you can find it HERE. As it’s a special occasion, I’ll also give you an extract from a little further in as well. Andorra is exploring the space station that is now her home, with her new friend, astrophysicist and twin Terri.

We went past the main lifts, into a small alley like the approach to the café, only this one was better lit. There was a small lift tucked away in a corner and Terri used a plastic card to open the door.

“This is the secure lift; you need a card to open it. It’s the only way to get to some of the working areas. Stay close to me.” She pressed a button and we rose quickly, my knees sagged and my ears popped. The numbers rolled back to zero. “This is the observatory. There’s a lot of expensive gear up here; please don’t touch anything.”

The trouble was, I knew from past experience that the harder that I tried to keep away the more I would somehow be dragged closer. It was like a magnet of embarrassing clumsiness. Telling me not to touch something was like asking me to break it in the most improbable and non-repairable way that I could.

We arrived and stepped out; there was a flight of steps leading up. It got darker as we climbed in a spiral and I stumbled in the dark, grabbing the handrail for support.

“Why is it getting darker,” I asked. “It helps your vision adjust,” Terri whispered. As I reached the top and looked around, I almost forgot to breathe.

The ceiling of the observatory was transparent. Everything above desk height was see-through. There were banks of computers on low desks but otherwise the view was uninterrupted. And what a view! I felt like I was perched at the centre of the universe. Were there really that many stars? Saturn was over to one side and our sun, no more than a bright tennis ball, was away in the other direction. I could see the planet, the rings and several moons, all floating in front of a backdrop of scattered diamonds.

I stepped over to the glass or whatever it was. Looking down, the bulk of the station lay below me, dark and featureless. It was so much bigger than I had thought, stretching away in all directions, its disc hiding the stars. We were slightly offset from the middle and you couldn’t see over the edge of it. “It’s all painted to absorb light,” Terri explained. “And our telescope is over there.” She pointed to a shape on the edge of the station, articulated like a crane. “We can swing it around from here,” she explained, “and for the bits that the station masks, we have another on the bottom, on the opposite side.”

Lou was working on a large flat table, lit from inside, she had what looked like X-ray plates laid out and was peering at them through a large, brass-framed magnifying glass on a stalk.

“Hi, Andi,” she said, standing up and rubbing her back. “Bloody table’s built for short people… Oops, sorry.”

Behind me Terri giggled and then stopped abruptly. We couldn’t all be tall and graceful like them. I was used to it. I pretended not to notice; anyway, there was no malice in her voice.

“Why do you look at the pictures with a magnifying glass,” I asked, “when you have all these computers to analyse things?” I stood as far as I could from everything, trying to keep my hands by my sides, fighting the urge to touch something, anything!

“They’re not as sensitive as an eye,” she said. “And there are so many things to programme in to make sure they do it properly. We don’t miss as much as they do, and we do it quicker.”

“They analyse the bits we spot,” added Terri. “Once we tell them where to look.” The two of them bent over a picture and started talking in a foreign language, all red-shifts and quasars or something.

As my vision adjusted I could make out quite a few other people in the room, working at computers or just looking out at the view. But I suspect they would say they were studying things. There was an air of studious calm that I couldn’t quite adjust to, hence my present occupation, important though it was. I’d never been academic, I was never able to shut up and concentrate for long enough to work out what the teacher was going on about. But here, I felt like I understood completely, I was a part of all that I could see. I almost wanted to step outside and just… belong. Fortunately there wasn’t a door; I’d have been opening it.

Seeing Lou and Terri work made me realise just what an act the whole twins thing was, here they were in their element, single-minded and professional. They ignored me and carried on with their technical discussion, that was OK though, I could have stood here forever.

“Andi, sorry, we got lost there,” said Terri, after what might have been a few moments or may have been a lot longer. I had no idea and wasn’t bothered. You could see just how contrived time was here. “Let’s go down to the farm, there’s a lot more to see.”

“Can I come back up here again?” I asked in a whisper, like you did in church, somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to talk loudly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We don’t notice,” said Lou. “It’s all familiar, you can come up with one of us, just ask. But you’ll soon get bored with it.” I didn’t agree, after London and the enclosed spaces I’d been in, this was freedom. This was what I had run to find, I knew it then. The memory of Tina offering us a trip in a mining craft even interested me.

We got back into the lift and went down two floors. We got out of the lift and walked back down an alley to an open space similar to the one on our own deck.

“Every deck has the same basic layout,” Terri explained. “We’re back at the main lifts.”

Opposite the lift was an airlock. I knew that because there were big signs that said ‘Warning, Airlock!’.

“Where are we going now?” I asked as she typed in a code. The door opened and we walked in. Didn’t we need spacesuits or something if we were going out of an airlock? Maybe they were inside. The outer doors closed behind us with a clang. The space was empty, just a metal box. I was about to ask what was going on when there was a hiss and a flash of red light. I felt my face and body being sprayed with a sweet smelling chemical, like hairspray. I jumped, it was cold, and then it evaporated in a blast of warm air. “Don’t worry,” Terri reassured me. “It’s just disinfectant, you’ll see.”

“We’re not going outside are we?” I tried not to sound worried. “Of course not,” she said as the door opened and I stepped into a sight I never thought I’d see again.

I hope you enjoyed that. All the Andorra Pett stories are available from Amazon, the links are in the titles.

Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café

Andorra Pett on Mars

Andorra Pett and her Sister

Are we There Yet?

Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café is currently just £1.99 ($2.99).

The next Andorra Pett story will be out as soon as I can get to finish it.

Next week, I’ll move on to last year, 2017. The NaNo project for that year was based on a dream I had, a long time ago. The resulting novel, Life and Other Dreams, was published in March 2019.

If you missed last weeks post, about NaNoWriMo in 2014 you can find it by clicking here.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free short story and more news by clicking this link.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back on Monday with another BlogHop, the Indie Showcase will return on Thursday.

If you’re attempting NaNo this year, I hope it’s going really well, just remember, you’re nearly halfway. Even if you don’t think you’ll finish, keep writing.

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The Indie Showcase presents; Lizzie Chantree.

Please welcome this week’s guest to the Showcase.

Follow your dreams. They know the way…

I’m thrilled to have been invited
here today. My name is Lizzie Chantree and I am a contemporary romance author
who writes romantic comedy novels that will hopefully make you smile. I am also
a business mentor and my books are full of strong women with some pretty zany
business ideas! I run a networking hour on Twitter called #CreativeBizHour to
support creatives and really enjoy hearing from people who are following their
dreams.

I began my first business with a market stall and this evolved into two shops and a wholesale business, where I exhibited my products at trade shows and sold them all over the world.  After running my business for many years my daughter became unwell. I wrote my first book during this time to keep myself awake (and sane) at night so that I could hear her breathing. As my daughter’s health improved I began to write more and accepted a book deal with publishers Crooked Cat Books.

My books all have women in them
who are stronger than they realise and because writing helped me through such a
hard time in my life, I write stories full of love, romance and sunshine, in
the hope of lifting others through their own troubled times.

My latest romance read is called If you love me, I’m yours. It is about a shy woman with a lot of insecurities, who is suddenly thrust into the limelight. Her whole world changes and she has to deal with jealousy, fame and the disapproval of her family. Throughout the story, she finds out who her real friends are and finds a way to live the life she’s always secretly dreamed of.

 Wishing you all a fun-filled and creative day.

Author Bio:

Award-winning inventor and author, Lizzie Chantree, started her own business at the age of 18 and became one of Fair Play London and The Patent Office’s British Female Inventors of the Year in 2000. She discovered her love of writing fiction when her children were little and now runs networking hours on social media, where creative businesses, writers, photographers and designers can offer advice and support to each other. She lives with her family on the coast in Essex.

Links

Social media
links:

Website: www.lizziechantree.com

Author page: https://www.viewAuthor.at/LizzieChantree

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lizzie_Chantree

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LizzieChantree/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizzie_chantree/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/LizzieChantree/pins/

FB Groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/647115202160536/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7391757.Lizzie_Chantree

WordPress: https://lizziechantree.com

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lizzie-chantree

AllAuthor: https://allauthor.com/author/lizziechantree/

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizzie-chantree-03006425/

Book Blurb

‘If you love me, I’m yours…’

Maud didn’t mind being boring, not really. She had a sensible job, clothes, and love life… if you counted an overbearing ex who had thanked her, rolled over and was snoring before she even realised he’d begun! She could tolerate not fulfilling her dreams, if her parents would pay her one compliment about the only thing she was passionate about in life: her art.

Dot should have fit in with her flamboyant and slightly eccentric family of talented artists, but somehow, she was an anomaly who couldn’t paint. She tried hard to be part of their world by becoming an art agent extraordinaire, but she dreamed of finding her own voice. 

Dot’s brother Nate, a smoulderingly sexy and famous artist, was adored by everyone. His creative talent left them in awe of his ability to capture such passion on canvas. Women worshipped him, and even Dot’s friend Maud flushed and bumped into things when he walked into a room, but a tragic event in his past had left him emotionally and physically scarred, and reluctant to face the world again.

Someone was leaving exquisite little paintings on park benches, with a tag saying, ‘If you love me, I’m yours’. The art was so fresh and cutting-edge, that it generated a media frenzy and a scramble to discover where the mystery artist could be hiding. The revelation of who the prodigious artist was interlinked Maud, Dot and Nate’s lives forever, but their worlds came crashing down. 

Were bonds of friendship, love and loyalty strong enough to withstand fame, success and scandal?

Book link: viewbook.at/IfYouLoveMe-ImYours

My thanks to this weeks guest for a great post. I hope you all enjoyed it.

While you’re here, why not have a look around the site? There are FREE things and a whole lot more, just follow the links at the top of the page.

You might also like to join my team. I’ll send you a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with news, updates and extra content, as well as more about me and my worlds. You’ll also get a free short story and offers on my novels. Subscribe by clicking HERE

If you want to be
featured in a future Showcase, where you can write about whatever
(within reason) you want, then please let me know. Use the comment box below
and I’ll get back to you.

You can catch up on
previous Showcase posts by clicking HERE

Don’t miss the Saturday Rewind, next Thursdays Showcase post, and my musings every Monday.

Have a good week,

Richard.

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Blog Hopping, to Google or not?

Welcome to another BlogHop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Do you Google yourself?

Before we begin, I’m afraid that this will only be a short post; I’m currently engaged in the annual novel writing challenge that is NaNoWriMo. More about that at the end of this post.

Back to the prompt.

Apart from entering the name of my website into a Google search to make sure that it was showing up, I have never Googled myself. To be honest, I don’t ever intend to. While the internet is a great invention, it has a downside. Anyone can say whatever they like online. I have no control over whatever might be said about me, it’s often been said that eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves. And as the bard said,

That being the case, I’d rather not know. If I have a Wikipedia page, you can rest assured that it’s not been written by me.

I’m of the age that grew up before the mobile phone (with
full HD video recording) was a fixture in every pocket. I guess that we were fortunate
because what we did was invisible to anyone that wasn’t actually there. I (and
many others) have a lot to be thankful for, some of the things that I did back
then are best left unsaid. Mind you, others would look great on YouTube!!!

Moving to the present, as someone who produces a form of art; part of putting your work out into the public domain requires a certain amount of bravery. There needs to be an acceptance that things will be written about you, some might even be true, ultimately you need to remember that you have no control over peoples opinions.

What good would it do to read it all and fume? The last thing you should do is get online to complain, justify yourself or try to change whatever has been said. Acting in a positive way, never being rude or unkind is a great way to try and ensure that you acquire and keep a good reputation online. Sadly, it may not be enough. If you attract unwelcome attention, I’ve found that silence is the best defence; ignorance is truly bliss.

While I don’t concern myself with what might be; I do
however admit to looking at reviews of my work on Amazon or Goodreads. I enjoy
the good ones and accept the bad, you can learn a lot about your writing from a
bad review, it can help you to do better next time.

Finally, a word of warning. If you Google me; or anyone else
for that matter, don’t believe all that you might find. And please don’t tell
me about it.

You’ll have to excuse me, NaNoWriMo is calling. I’m needed back on Gallix, where my hero finds himself in a spot of bother. Here’s a taste of this year’s project.

I’ll be back on Thursday with another guest on the Indie
Showcase.

Please leave a comment below, then check out all the other great blogs on the hop.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

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The first Saturday of NaNoWriMo 2019

As it’s November and I’m busy trying to complete NaNoWriMo for the fifth time; I thought that it would be a good idea to show you some extracts from previous years NaNo projects. I actually wrote all these posts a while ago, except for the last one, so I would have a clear schedule for the challenge.

We’ll start with 2014, my first year of participation. I was still employed as a pilot by the Port of London Authority, but I was on sick leave, having hurt my shoulder. In fact, I had an 8mm bone spur in the joint, which prevented full movement of my arm. I was later to have surgery on the joint to remove it. I didn’t know it at the time but my career was over. I’d already self-published one novel, Freefall and was thinking of writing a second. I saw an article about NaNoWriMo online somewhere, it seemed like an interesting premise and the time off gave me the chance to have a go.

With time on my hands and an idea in my head (a what-if moment based on an experience I had while still at work), I wrote the first draft of Ribbonworld, just over 60,000 words in the month. It was finished enough to send it out to a few people I trusted, to get honest opinions. Their comments were encouraging, so I rewrote it using some of the suggestions I got back, along with the things that I wanted to change. In the end, it came in at just over 70,000 words.

One of the best responses I got was from Helen Hollick, an author who I dared to ask the opinion of.

She said,

Well now I’m going to be blunt and firm, since you asked.

You want the truth? You did ask for the truth.

I don’t quite know how to put this but I’m not very impressed with you Richard.

You do realise I have now spent over an hour reading your bloomin brilliant book, and not getting on with my own work, don’t you? LOL

I rarely like first person, the exception is Dick Francis. I usually struggle with first person because the story often comes out as ‘tell not show’ – but I was hooked into yours straight away. I was there in that (Premier Inn / Travelodge) room – I’ll now never go into another without checking the bathroom first! It has pace, impact, interest… I want to read more ”

Is this a one-off or are you planning a series? I hope a series… this has potential!

That was the thing that encouraged me to carry on, Freefall had been out for a while and was not selling very well. If I had received a more negative reaction to Ribbonworld than positive, I was contemplating giving it all up.

Here’s an extract from Ribbonworld. As Helen referred to the bathroom in her email, we’ll start there. Our hero has arrived in his hotel room but can’t get the bathroom door open. He’s called room service and fallen asleep while waiting.

The door buzzer woke me with a jolt. Looking at my watch I saw that I had been asleep for almost an hour. “Coming,” I called, thinking it must be the repairman. I was feeling a bit disorientated from the dream so I didn’t look through the spyhole, I just pushed the lock release by the door and stood back.

The door slid open and there were two of them, in crumpled looking suits and wearing worn expressions. I could tell straight away that they weren’t repairmen.

“Who are you?” the taller one said, waving an official-looking card at me. His gaze travelled over my shoulder, taking it all in. I had déjà-vu; this was just like it had been in my dream, and before that in my reality.

“I could ask you the same,” I replied, suddenly very awake.

“We’re the police,” said the second man, shorter and more rotund, with dark hair and a beard, “Detectives Flanagan and Chumna. We got a tip-off.”

I had a sinking feeling. “I didn’t call you, I called the desk – I can’t get the bathroom door open.”

They came into the room as I backed down the corridor; the one called Flanagan took a small multi-driver from his inside pocket and levered open the control panel for the room electronics. He fiddled around for a while, and the bathroom door started to slide open. When it reached the obstruction, it didn’t shut; it stopped with a six-inch gap.

The motor kept whirring as the two detectives put latex gloves on and held the edge of the door. They both pulled, grunting with the effort. Whatever was in there wasn’t giving up easily. Slowly the door slid open until Chumna was able to squeeze through the gap. He disappeared. There was a dragging sound and the door opened fully.

The light came on, just as he called out, “Barry, get in here.”

Flanagan disappeared into the room. “Don’t come in,” he called to me over his shoulder. Fair enough, but by going to the open door I could see what was going on in the mirror. And I was still enough of a journalist to be nosey.

A man’s body was lying in the shower stall, with one leg flung out against the door. He was about my size, early middle-aged and muscular, his flesh slackened in death.

There was no blood, or obvious wound, but as my gaze travelled over his body, I saw that the neck was mottled with blue and black bruises, below light stubble.

His eyes held my gaze, open wide, bulging from the skull and staring ahead in a shocked expression. The tongue had swollen up and forced the lips into a cross between a grin and a snarl. The detectives turned the body, patting the pockets, and Chumna pulled a wallet from one of them. I could see that it was full of paper money. He extracted an ID card and held it up to the face. The two exchanged knowing glances. One of them called out to me, “Do you know someone called Nic Stavriedies?”

That could be difficult to explain. I sort of did, but until I knew a bit more about the situation that I found myself in, I didn’t feel happy admitting it. So I said nothing.

They both emerged from the bathroom. “Who did you say you were?” said the tall one.

“I didn’t. I’m Miles Goram and I’ve only just got here.”

He consulted his notebook, nodding.

“That’s what it says here,” he said, “but you haven’t answered me, do you know him?”

“I know who he is, was, but I’ve never met him before, only talked to him, that’s why I’m here.”

“And why are you here?” This came from the short one, Chumna or whatever it was.

“I’m a writer, and I was supposed to be doing a piece about Nic Stavriedies and his hotel.”

I hope you enjoyed that, please leave a comment below. Ribbonworld is available from Amazon at a reduced price this week, just £1.99 ($2.99), so if you’ve enjoyed the extract, grab a copy for the full story. And if you do read it, please leave a review.

Next week, I’ll be telling you about my 2016 NaNo project, which turned out to be a step in a completely different direction.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back with a blog hop on Monday and another Indie Showcase on Thursday.

If you’re attempting NaNo this year, I hope it’s going well.

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The Indie Showcase presents; Gilbert Stack

Please welcome this week’s guest. Gilbert describes himself as a Historian and Author (Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, SF and Paranormal Adventures).

How I Learned to Stop Doubting and
Love Self Publishing

Books have long been one of the
centers of my life. It started with my mother reading Dr. Seuss and quickly
moved on to the Hardy Boys, The Land of Oz, and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three
Investigators. These were books that ignited my imagination and made me crave more.
By sixth grade I had discovered J.R.R. Tolkein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Neil
Hancock. The bookstore was a six-mile bike ride and by eighth grade my best
friend and I were making the trip every week where I spent my paper route money
on new novels and new adventures. In high school I joined the Science Fiction
Book Club and my reading horizons broadened even further—Roger Zelazny, Robert
A. Heinlein, C.J. Cherryh, David Eddings, and Terry Brooks to name a few.

In high school I also started getting
serious about my own plots and my own books and tried to develop interactive
stories through role playing games. These weren’t my first ventures into
fiction—those stretched back to my imaginary friend when I was still in
preschool—but it’s when I first started thinking about becoming a novelist. In
college I completed my first full-length novel and I started studying history
to enrich my fantasy writing, eventually going to graduate school and earning a
PhD. During these years I wrote a lot of stories and started to collect
rejection notices, but it was only after I completed my doctorate that my
fiction really started to take off.

My first sale, Pandora’s Luck,
was to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery
Magazine and focused on a bare-knuckle boxer and a lady gambler traveling
together in the Wild West.  It was an
action-packed crime story and was followed by fifteen others, mostly in the
same series.

While the AHMM mysteries began to
sell I continued to explore other markets. I sold a superhero story to Cyber Age Adventures, but it went out
of business before my tale could be published. That was a common problem with
online ebook companies, many of which published my growing library of stories
but couldn’t stay in business in the long run. So my urban fantasies—historical
and modern—made their debut but didn’t stay around long enough to let me build
a following. These collapses were terribly disappointing but it eventually
became apparent to me that the publishing world was moving in the direction of
the independent author and if I wanted to reach readers I had to learn a new
business model.

Now I’m pursuing my dreams
self-publishing my work on Amazon and through the Smashwords distribution
network. I’m writing fantasy novels like my Legionnaire series which has really taken off. It’s a fantasy
series built on an analogue of the Roman Empire (called Aquila) in a world in
which magic and the supernatural are very real. The first short novel, The
Fire Islands, introduces Lesser Tribune Marcus Venandus and his Black Vigil
Severus Lupus as they struggle to maintain the discipline of their unit in
extremely adverse conditions.

Maps are very important to
fantasy literature, and I was very fortunate to discover Chris Adams—an
amazingly talented painter who took my poor pen and paper scratches and turned
them into works of remarkable beauty as you can see first in this map of the
Jeweled Hills in the Legionnaire series:

And then in his even more
incredible map of my other fantasy series, Winterhaven:

And now I’m very excited to
announce that the first three books of my Legionnaire series are available in
audio format at Audible thanks to the amazing vocal talents of Will Hahn.

I hope you’ll stop by my website
at: https://www.gilbertstack.com/

And Chris’ website at: https://www.chrisladamsbizarretales.com/

And Will’s website at: https://www.williamlhahn.com/posts/category/lands-of-hope/

To learn more about my work. I’ll
leave you with the blurbs and covers for the first books in both series and a
sincere thank you to Richard for hosting me.

Lesser
Tribune Marcus Venandus, Legion officer exemplar, was exiled to the
disease-ridden hell hole known as the Fire Islands as punishment for the failed
political machinations of his father. While the days of the powerful
witchdoctor kings throwing skeletal armies against the shields of the legion
have faded into history, all is not right at the edge of the world. Unrest is
boiling once again as long dead darkness seeps back into the islands. With the
legion more concerned with its personal rivalries than with its duty, it will
fall to Marcus and his small, highly disciplined, command to put the horrors of
the past back in their graves and literally save Aquila from a fate worse than
death. 

In the far off Duchy of Winterhaven at the edge of human civilization, a young knight investigates a most unusual murder while the Great Lords of the land scheme to expand their borders and take control of the duchy. A decade of relative peace is about to collapse and only young Dhrugal of Edgefield and his brothers and sister stand between Winterhaven and dark-spun chaos.

My thanks to this weeks guest for a great post. I hope you all enjoyed it.

While you’re here, why not have a look around the site? There are FREE things and a whole lot more, just follow the links at the top of the page.

You might also like to join my team. I’ll send you a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with news, updates and extra content, as well as more about me and my worlds. You’ll also get a free short story and offers on my novels. Subscribe by clicking HERE

If you want to be
featured in a future Showcase, where you can write about whatever
(within reason) you want, then please let me know. Use the comment box below
and I’ll get back to you.

You can catch up on
previous Showcase posts by clicking HERE

Don’t miss the Saturday Rewind, next Thursdays Showcase post, and my musings every Monday.

Have a good week,

Richard.

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Blog Hopping, a different kind of block.

Welcome to another BlogHop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

We’ve talked about writer’s block. Have you ever gotten reader’s block?

To be a writer, you have to love reading and read a lot. Not just before you write, but during the process as well. There are two reasons, it helps you to see what others are writing and how they’re writing it, it also clears your mind if you’re getting bogged down.

In the same way that I write more than one story at a time, I will very often be reading several books simultaneously, reading a few pages of each before swapping over.

I’ve always had a short attention span, I think that this continual grazing helps me to keep my brain active and stop me getting too bored. Strangely, I seem able to keep track of everything without too much trouble. It probably saves me from reader’s block too, as I change book before it sets in.

I’ve always read like that, right back as far as I can remember. It used to attract a lot of negative comments from teachers, but then, I was used to that. Everything I did at school seemed to attract negative comments, I was told that I couldn’t possibly do a lot of things. That’s another story, as they say.

Personally, although I write speculative fiction,

I tend to read just about anything. Up to and including the labels on cereal packets.  It might surprise you to learn that you can pick up a lot of useful writing information there. The text is designed to entice you, impart information in easy to read short sentences. Ultimately, it’s designed to make you buy. Just like a blurb, or an action sequence really. Study the way the information is presented and you’ll see what I mean. The style can be copied to give your book descriptions urgency and make your action stand out.

Looks like I’ve gone off-topic again. Returning to the subject, as well as Sci-fi and Steampunk, I also enjoy reading something that’s completely different. A genre swap can refresh a jaded imagination, take your mind off a block and even suggest a new way of looking at what you’re trying to say.

My wife reckons that you need to read a book that resets your brain every now and then. A title that you might never have considered from a genre or author that you’ve never tried before. Or a humorous book if you’re read a run of serious ones, escapism after dark adventure; you get the idea.

Like most of her ideas, it works. I guess it’s just a similar way to one of the solutions to writer’s block, which is to try writing about something different.

As if I didn’t have enough things to read,

there are the research books, websites, magazines and all the other sources that I use to make my worlds as realistic as possible. Creating a believable future, or an alternative now takes a lot of effort. In fact, I’ve written a textbook about world-building, in an effort to try and stop people making all the mistakes that it would have been good to avoid.

When you’re researching, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time reading about a subject that might only occupy a page or two of your novel; just to enable you to write with authenticity. That’s a prime place to get reader’s block, especially as you HAVE to do it. I’ve always found that having to do something makes it harder. Mind you, once you develop the tenacity to wade through obscure technical journals for the facts that bring your world to life, you need a bit of light entertainment afterwards, as a reward.

What do you think? I’d love to get your thoughts.

Please leave a comment below. I’ll be back on Thursday with another Indie Showcase. Feel free to have a look around my website; then check out the rest of the great blogs on this hop.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

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A tale for the season.

Its the time of the year when I feature a short story for Halloween. I wrote The Veil for a Circle of Spears performance at the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle. back in 2016.

They left the subject up to me, but I think that they wanted a ghost story, a spooky tale of haunting and blood-curdling terror. What they got, well the idea that I had was slightly different, I wrote about loss and enduring love. And how neither time or space is important when you’re soul mates.

The audio version features the vocal talents of Tracey Norman, who you might have spotted on The Indie Showcase a while ago.

It’s just under six minutes long, please have a listen and tell me what you think.

If you’d prefer to read the story, here it is.

The Veil.

To the children, he was just the old man who lived on his own; he had become an object of fun. They would laugh at his shuffling gait and threadbare clothes; taunt him as he walked to the shops. For days he was invisible; the windows of the house remained heavily curtained, black eyes staring out on an empty world.

For a dare the children would run up the path and ring the bell; or rattle the letterbox, sometimes the braver ones would sneak down the side of his house and tip his bins over. The children, being young, had no interest in anyone old, and they had no respect for his struggles, no understanding of the things that he believed.

He would shout and wave his stick at them, driven to despair. Alone behind the door, he spoke to his wife, “What can I do, they won’t leave me alone.” He was sure that she would hear and help him, for all those years they had helped each other, now he needed her. And they had made a pact; the first to pass through the veil would come back if they could. He believed in the veil, and in the realm beyond, but she had never returned.

On the other side of the veil, his wife heard the words, but could do nothing. She was no further from him in death than in life, she saw his suffering but the veil was too thick, she had no power to help. She could send him little signs; move things a few inches, break light bulbs, hide his socks. Yet despite her promise, he never realized it was her, he thought it was just his age, his mind playing tricks, thought that he was going crazy in his grief.

Both he and the children understood Halloween in different ways, they viewed it in the earthly, materialistic way, and they saw it as a chance to make his life even more of a misery. They planned all sorts of things, under the guise of “Trick or treat.”  There would be no treat, of that they were sure, and the trick would be theirs to play on him.

Meanwhile, he viewed it in the old way; he knew that she would be closer to him on that night, and he was sure that she was trying to keep her promise; if there was only some way to reach out.

For as he knew, the veil thins on All Hallows Eve; his wife knew that too. She could see everything from her side and could feel his pain and anger. Daily her strength grew, fed by her love, she was determined that his time apart from her would not be spent in misery.

She decided that, on that night, she would act. She would make him notice; she would go back and do what she had promised. Then when he believed, he would be reassured. She was not alone. On her side of the veil, many were preparing to visit, to spend a little time where they once had been, where they would be again. They had spoken to each other and she had finally learned how.

As darkness fell, he sat in his chair, half asleep. Using all the power she had, she finally pierced the veil and came to be with him. Outside the children prepared for the trick.

“Is that you, my love?” he thought, as at last, he could feel her with him.

Without speaking she softly replied, “yes, I’m here with you, I’m always with you.” Her words and voice were clear in his head.

“Help me,” he pleaded.  There was a crash from outside as the first bin was toppled. He cowered. She became angry, she saw a handsome youth in the broken old man, could see what they were doing to him, what right did they have to scare her soul-mate? In her rage her power grew, she had pierced the veil; the wall would not be a barrier to her.

Sniggering, the children turned to run down the alleyway, they stopped still as she appeared in front of them, bright as day, a blazing, righteous angel. As one they screamed, fighting each other to be the furthest away from her. But there was nowhere to hide.

Inside the man was confused, half-asleep, there was a lot of shouting, he had felt her with him, heard her speak, was this all a dream, what was happening?

The sound stopped, all was quiet. He relaxed in the chair and she was beside him once more.

“They won’t bother you again,”

Her warmth comforted him, he could feel her love, she was young again beside his aged shell.

“Stay with me,” he thought.

“Come with me,” she replied.

© Richard Dee 2016

I hope you enjoyed that, please leave a comment below.

I’ll be back on Monday with another blog hop. The Showcase returns on Thursday, with another great post.

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The Indie Showcase presents; Sheri Poe-Pape

Please welcome this week’s guest to the Showcase.

Though Sheri Poe-Pape has written many internet articles about people in the arts and in history, “Cassie’s Marvelous Music Lessons” and “Cassie Pup Takes the Cake??” are the author’s first two children’s books. She has also been Director/Educator of the Pape Conservatory of Music for the past thirty-nine years. Each day, she warms up on the piano, and for fifteen of those years, a small dog has been her constant companion.

In recent years, little Cassie has stood on the right side of the keyboard and brushed the author’s hands off the piano keys and helped also to be a ‘baker’s helper’ – habits that inspired these stories! The author is a graduate of Northern Illinois University where she studied music, English and creative writing.  She lives with her family in Northern Illinois, where she continues to write and to teach music-alongside Cassie.

Winner of six national children’s book awards.

Visit her website at www.sheripoe-pape.com

Sheri is also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sheri.pape.7 with interviews and lots more.

My thanks to this weeks guest for a great post. I hope you all enjoyed it.

While you’re here, why not have a look around the site? There are FREE things and a whole lot more, just follow the links at the top of the page.

You might also like to join my team. I’ll send you a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with news, updates and extra content, as well as more about me and my worlds. You’ll also get a free short story and offers on my novels. Subscribe by clicking HERE

If you want to be
featured in a future Showcase, where you can write about whatever
(within reason) you want, then please let me know. Use the comment box below
and I’ll get back to you.

You can catch up on
previous Showcase posts by clicking HERE

Don’t miss the Saturday Rewind, next Thursdays Showcase post, and my musings every Monday.

Have a good week,

Richard.

103 total views, 103 views today

The post The Indie Showcase presents; Sheri Poe-Pape appeared first on Welcome to my Worlds..

Blog Hopping; Give them what they want.

It’s time for another BlogHop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

Hopefully, what readers want is originality; or at least a
different way of looking at a familiar subject.

Personally, I think you have to have a combination of both. It’s possibly easier for an Indie author to write original work. Indies are blessed with a lot of freedom; because we haven’t got an agent or publishing house breathing down our neck about writing to trend or fulfilling a deal, we can write what we want. In general, there is nobody demanding changes to fit their perception of the market.

Within my own genre, speculative fiction;

there are a lot of ideas that have yet to be explored, so even though you might have a connection to other work, you don’t need to be formulaic. And there’s always a chance of crossing genres, producing work that marries different ideas, like solving crime in space or topical issues of power and corruption in a Steampunk adventure.

I like to start my reader off in a place they feel comfortable with. It could be a hotel room, on a journey or by walking my characters into a familiar setting. Even though I might be talking about the future, or an alternative now, there will still be things in those worlds that we recognise. And situations that they will have experienced, or at last have knowledge of.

I work on the theory that, that if I can get the reader nodding as they turn the pages, they are empathising with the situation. When they are relaxed, I can hit them with the big WOW!!! moment and start to weave my own narrative. At that point, they are more likely to follow along for the ride and see where we end up.

I write in three distinct styles,

or sub-genres of speculative fiction, which also gives me the chance to experiment, strangely my biggest success has come from a project that was never intended to be more than a gentle parody, a different take on the familiar.

I noticed a large number of books about people who, for various reasons, moved to the coast and opened a café on the beach (or similar). As an experiment, I wrote a short tongue-in-cheek story about a lady called Andorra Pett, who was dumped by her boyfriend. Instead of the coast, she moved to a space station orbiting Saturn. She still opened a café though. I showed it to my editor who loved it and suggested that it was just different enough to warrant expanding to a full novel.

From that moment, I started getting ideas for adventures that Andorra could have. The fusing of sci-fi with the whole wronged in love and finding yourself theme has so far led to three novels, a short story and several works in development. They’re a cross between Sci-fi and cozy mystery, with a dash of humour. As I said, it’s my most successful series and has gained remarks like these,

This is about as different as it gets in terms of sci/fi murder mystery sleuthing. For a start it is set on Saturn in a café frequented by miners, with lots of gossip and dodgy goings on and a body hidden in a freezer. It is imaginative and I like imaginative! The author himself has described it as an ‘Agatha Raisin in space.’

I wouldn’t consider myself a sci-fi fan, but I so enjoyed this book maybe I am?

This is a fresh take on the cosy mystery café genre and
it really worked.

An excellent read containing an imaginative mix of genres that I had never considered before. 

In terms of compliments for originality,

the best review I ever had was for my dual-time adventure Life and Other Dreams, where it initially appears that a man dreams of living a different life in the future. All very ordinary, until his dream life starts to invade his reality. We start to wonder if the dream is the reality, or could they both be real?

The full review is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R2ZCYN15Q47HIJ, this is the relevant part.

It’s a book you think about long after it’s finished and one that truly belongs in the upper echelon of sci-fi, surpassing much of what has come before. It creates its own identity which is an amazing thing. It’s rare for a book to feel as fresh and new as this. I wondered partway through if it would be similar to ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale’ by Philip K Dick (which was later turned into the film Total Recall) but no. It went its own path and one that I’d say works better than that of Dick’s story. I like the fact that no proper comparison can be drawn, as nowadays there seem to be so many similar books with the same themes and plot devices. It is really nice to have an author write what they want and not just pander to what performs the best in the charts.

I loved the part that I’ve highlighted,

it showed me that, although I might not sell books in large quantities, I have created something that resonated. I’ve been original AND I’ve given the reader what they wanted.

So, to sum up, originality is important and worth pursuing.
It can come from the most unlikely source and, while it may not always be
popular with the mainstream; who knows, you could be starting your own trend.

Give the readers what they want and one day, people might be copying you.

I’ll be back on Thursday, with another Indie Showcase. Please leave a comment below, then go and investigate all the other great blogs on the hop.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

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