Trey Stone's Blog, page 41

How many books do you write at once?

I’ve seen a lot of my friends (and idols) on Twitter lately, writing about how they write.

Their process, their methods. I love reading about it, to see how people do stuff differently. I try not to get to caught up in it all, I know I have my own way, but it’s difficult to not think “Oh! I should do that” when I see those posts.

I’m not gonna go on too much about it, people write differently, and every method works (I’m pretty sure.) Me, I’m a hybrid between a plotter and a pantser (or discovery writer as I’m used to calling it). Meaning I plot some, then just roll with it.

Anyway – different methods aside, there’s another part of how writers write which I don’t feel like I see too much of. How do you like… write?

For some reason, all the stories I’ve planned to write, are laid out in my head linearly. Imagine a conveyor belt of stories. No. 1 comes first, then no. 2, and so on. I imagine other people also have many stories running in their head, or on paper, at the same time, but just pick and choose between what they want/feel like writing. But me, I can’t start no. 3 until no. 2 is finished.

Or so I thought.

I hired a new editor last year, to help me do some changes to my first book, which has been out for a little while (but that’s another story). Point is, much of my time’s been going into that. At the same time, I finished the first draft for book 2. The next thing on my to-do-list is to do a bunch of rewrites for this book, before I can go on to the nitty-gritty editing of it. At the same time, book no. 3, 4, and 5, plus some other things are lined up waiting to be created.

But I felt like I couldn’t begin. I’m a very systematic and organized guy (I tell myself). I can’t start something without finishing something else. So even though I’m redoing some work on book 1, and working on book 2, that’s it. I couldn’t possibly start book 3.

But then I did.

Editing is boring. Soooo boring. Often. at least. To me, writing feels like creating, while editing feels like destruction. Of course it’s nice to see it all come together, to become better and make sense. But working on rewriting and editing two books, I’d forgotten how fun it is to just jump into writing a book. Just go, without any worry about “is this word good here, does this sentence make sense?” Simply writing, is so freeing.

There was a point I was going to make with this, and I think it was this: I wonder how other writers do this part of writing? Not outlining or pantsing, but organizing your stories. How many things do you work on at the same time, do you have set rules, or just do whatever you feel like?

 

In the end, I suppose the most important thing is to just keep writing.

Book Review: Padma and the Elephant Sutra by Wayne Snowden

*spoiler warning*

Plot: George, retired-coffee farmer and ex-miliary man, meets Padma, mysterious pink elephant, and they go on and amazing journey together.

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Review: This was a long, confusing book for me. The story of George and Padma is good, but it takes a third of the book before it begins. Before that there’s lots of confusing back story, we go thousands of years back to the past, and there’s talk about aliens. For sooo long I didn’t know what was going on, so I re-read parts of it occasionally, though I’m not sure it helped.

When we finally get to George and Padma, their story is good, and I liked it. But there was very little interaction between the characters I felt, and it was so difficult to grasp. There’s so much thinking, metaphors and philosophy that comes between the characters that I kept falling off constantly, not being able to follow the actual story. It was like trying to open a christmas gift, wrapped in a small box, put inside a larger box and then a larger box and then a larger box, and then a bag, in the back of a car, at the bottom of a river.

I exaggerate, but I really wanted to follow the story, yet found it difficult to grasp. I tried to claw my way into the heart of it, only to be ripped aside on another tangent. I also felt the ending of the book was dragged out and didn’t really focus on what I thought was happening and what I thought the ending was. George and Padma finally got to where they were headed, but then everything changed, and I didn’t get time to enjoy the end of their journey.

I felt like there’s a great story there, I just couldn’t get to it, or it was clouded in too much other fluff. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I just don’t get books like this – I see other people have read it and loved it – but this just wasn’t for me. As usual, I invite everyone to check it out, have a look at it, and please, do prove me wrong.

Check out Padma and the Elephant Sutra here.

Writing Prompt #2

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“Honey, look, it’s on the news again. Hun? Listen, it’s going to be fine. Let’s see what they say?” I put my arm around her, turning up the volume on the TV.

It’s been four weeks since The Noise stopped, four weeks, one day, and six hours. The global phenomenon which seemed at first to have only beneficial health effects, are now producing other results.

To begin with, after the inital shock, people reported better personal health, fewer migraines, less aching joints,  and better hearing. After the first few days there were global reports of people sleeping better, being more rested, and essentially feeling more vigorous. The first week report generally less hostility, crime, and we even have reports from known war-zones that conflicts are de-escalating. The amazing results from the lack of The Noise nearly had scientists forget about researching it’s source and origin, and more importantly, why it’s stopped.

But now, going into week five, reports of the adverse effect are beginning to overtake the positives. As you might have heard already, the adverse effects are simple… It is only the one.

Our thoughts. The voices. Whatever you want to call it. There’s no way of stopping them anymore. If and when it will affect you, is difficult to say. But the professionals are clear – people with a previous history of mental instability are hit first. The symtomps are few, but clear: Red, bloodied eyes, flamed skin, and hair loss. Victims of The Noise will often begin to claw at their head, the sides of the skull or the face, in an attempt of course, to stop it. We advice you to stay calm, take care of your loved ones, and stay tuned.

“See honey? It’s going to be fine…” Her taped hands were nearly loose again, so I grabbed them with my left hand and held them tight. With the other arm, I held around her, trying to keep her from rocking back and forth, gently caressing the bald patches on the side of her head.

Book Review: Conservation by James Flynn

*minor spoilers*

Plot: Supersize spaceship Conservation is launched in search for a new habitable planet, hoping to secure a future for the human race. But something goes horribly wrong.

Longer plot: The year is 2034. Climate change has ravaged Earth, food and shelter are even scarcer than before, and the world is descending into chaos. As Earth is slowly becoming more inhabitable, a plan to launch a spaceship to find suitainable planets is the one of the best and only options available. The giant ship Conservation, built by the Universal Mining Agency, housing plantlife, animals, and people, is launched. The people onboard will never themselves see their new, future home, but the generations following them will.

Fast forward 40 years, the last call and contact is made with the ship, and the people of Earth never hear from it again.

10 years later, the new CEO of the Universal Mining Agency and son of the man who launched the Conservation, is threatened. Threatened with information on his father, information that could very well lead to the downfall of his company. Launch a probe – find the Conservation, we want to know what happened.

And what did happen to the spaceship? Why didn’t anyone try to figure it out ten years prior? What was the real purpose of the launch? And what happened to everyone onboard?

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Review: I reeeaaaally loved this book. This is the kind of mysterious, thrillery Sci-Fi that is right up my alley. I assumed most of the plot would be set on the ship, which would been fine, but I was very happy that it wasn’t. We follow (mostly) David Kingston, the zoologist who provided the animal life that boarded the ship. And his quest to figure out what happened. And I was so bloody intrigued! I really would like to write more about the plot, to talk about it, ‘cuz it was so good – but I won’t, because spoilers. But I’ll say that it kept me hooked, like really, page upon page, only putting it down when I absolutely had to. There’s so much more to this than meets the eye, like I said above, it wasn’t what I assumed at all. It’s beautifully written, set in a magnificent, broken and battered future Earth, and I loved every second of it. Definitely one of my favourite reads this year.

When I noticed the ending coming, I was at first bit upset because it really didn’t take the turn I wanted (again, not what I assumed!). I was like ‘nooooo, it can’t end like this?!’ But then the ending got good, beautifully, destructingly good. It’s the kind of sad, horrible ending, that I love that people dare write. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Seriously – you need to check this out, if you want a mysterious, creepy Sci-Fi thriller that throws you this way and that – Check out James Flynn’s Conservation.

Writing Prompt #1

I want to do something different today. Writing is a lot of fun. I absolutely love it. But it’s really slow. And I can never catch up with all the ideas I have, if I’m going to be able to make any type of quality work out of them. So I decided to do an extra bit of side writing, it’s not much, but it’s something, it’s short and it’s fun. I’ve been collecting these writing prompts for ages, from twitter, facebook, reddit, everywhere. And I decided to put them to use. Starting with this one:

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I threw my eyes open and realized I was here again. The white room. Clutching the note in my hand. I didn’t even have to read it – I knew what it said. Same as it always said.

“Daaaaad!” I shouted, expecting the old familiar rumbling sound to greet me. I didn’t hear anything. “Daaad?” Finally I heard him stir.

“Welcome, my child,” he said in that ridiculous, booming voice.

“Cut the shit Dad, it’s me.” I heard him cough, clearing his throat, as he always had to do when he did the voice.

“Andy? What are you doing here?”

I paced back and forth as I always did when I was in there, looking up. I don’t know why I kept looking up, I know my father wasn’t up there, but that’s where the voice came from.

“What do you think? Uncle banned me again.”

“Really?” I could hear my father sigh. “Again? What did you do now?”

“Nothing! I fucking swear, he’s just being an asshole.”

“Don’t you call my brother an asshole. He’s done many great things for this world,” father said, more to himself than me.

“Well, if someone else dared talk back to him, maybe I wouldn’t have to…” I muttered.

“What was that Andy?”

“Nothing Dad, nothing. Can you speak to him? Get him to put me back? I wasn’t done.”

“I swear Andy, one of these days, you’re not going to be able to just be put back up there. What was it you did?” My father’s voice boomed through the white space.

“Nothing!”

“I don’t believe that, not for a second. Why can’t you be more like your cousin, he’s never been banned?”

“My cousin? Cousin Jesus? He did one little miracle 2000 years ago, and has never had to work a day in his life since. At least I’m there, on the playing field, every single day, working my ass off!”

“Now, now, don’t bad-mouth your cousin. He had to deal with his share of stuff too, you know that.”

“Suppose I do,” I kicked at the white floor. “So are you going to ask him, or do I have to ring up old Uncle God myself?”

“Stop fussing Andy. I’ll talk to him. When you tell me what you did.”

“Like I said, nothing.”

“Come on now. Are you embarrassed?”

“No. I did nothing! Uncle is just being mean. For once, I’ve actually been doing very good.”

“Andy, tell me what happened.”

“No. I’ll go ask him myself then.”

“Andy T. Christ, you tell me what you did right this second, or I swear by my Brother, I will put you in house arrest for the rest of the millenium, just like your sister.”

I hated when he got like that. Thinking he ruled half the planet, just because his brother is God.

“Where you a terrorist again? Please don’t tell me you did something that stupid! Was it a natural disaster? Andy, what did you do?”

“Nothing… Like I said, I’ve been doing well… I’m a president this time.”

Book Review: Dark of Winter by Christopher Percy

Probably going to spoil this for you – but I don’t care, ’cause this was awesome!

Plot: Mythical horrors are coming to the village of Sunmer, and the mutated villagers there have to defend themselves.

Longer plot: Hidden (yes, this is a name of one of the villagers), comes across a papilier, or at least what he thinks is a papilier, and bring it back to his village, Sunmer. His fears are confirmed, it is a papilier, a horrifying, shapeshifting creature, that can’t die. Well they can, and they kill it, but it takes four of the strongest villagers, cutting it to pieces, burning it and burying it, to get rid of it. But it’s too late. If the papilier has come, this means the Dark of Winter is coming, again. What happend to the village of Baern years ago, is happening again, and the myths are true, history is repeating itself. Bearn was levelled to the ground, disappearing in a large storm, nothing but a crater left. It was said demons came, killing the men, eating the young, and now, with the existence of the papilier, the demons are real.

At the same time, Vaconius is leading part of King Fialsun’s army North, to destroy Sunmer, and kill the mythical hero Threecuts, at the King’s command.

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Let me just get this out there, and I don’t usually do this, but this gets five stars from me. This was absolutely fantastic! This is the kind of dark, epic, gritty fantasy, where the winds have names, and you really get a sense of cold, horrible, dread. This book has one of the most emotional deaths I’ve read in ages, and I was literally sitting there whispering ‘no no no!’

I loved the originality of it, there are lots of weird creatures and people, yet there are no elves, dwarves, trolls, ogres, orcs, centaurs, or anything I’ve ever read about before. The universe, the world, the people, the thing they do, say, and think, was so beautifully written. And it’s so clever! There’s a variety of little subplots, some of which I’d really forgotten about, and didn’t really care about, but it all came together in the end, ALL of it. The ending was great, I really loved it, because it’s not the stereotypical, ‘good-guy-wins’ type of deal. (Don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled it for you).

I caught myself thinking, that this reads like a mix of The Hobbit and Orcs by Stan Nichols. Definitely one of my favourite recent reads, and I seriously highly recommend it to anyone fan of dark, epic, fantasy! Really, if you’re ever going to take my advice, do it now.

Go check it out – Dark of Winter by Christopher Percy.

 

Book Review: The Legend of Dollaretta by Cherry Gunzenhauser

You know the drill, be warned, blah-bleh-bluh, maybe spoilers.

So, graphic novel! I love when people send me stuff like this, not that I don’t enjoy regular books/novels, but I absolutely loooove when people dare to do different things.

I brought this one with me on a train, and it was amazing.

Plot: Basically – there are vampires, and we follow Demi (Demiece) a teenage vampire as she starts college. According to the other girls, the estate they live at is haunted, by Dollaretta. Creepyness ensues.

Longer plot: We start off with a bit of vampirism origin, to set up the world/universe we’re in. This bit is fascinating, not very long, but also not very related to what happens later with Demi. I assume (seeing as this is Volume 1), this is going to be more important in future installments, but nevertheless, it’s a good introduction.

Moving on to Demi going to college, to the Elizabeth Rose Convent. Some short background info, Demi hates his mom, doesn’t care that she leaves without saying good bye, and is not very happy to be there. She’s not interested in getting to know the other girls, and her favourite response to most people is “Fuck off.” (If she’d gone to my high school, I’d imagine she smokes as well).

During the first day there however, she’s told the legend of Dollaretta, a girl who lived on the estate before it became a college and who died there. Demi doesn’t bite, she’s not scared, in fact she doesn’t really care about anything at all. Except the day after, the girl who told her the story, is found dead. Some say it was suicide, some say it wasn’t.

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Review: I could go on about the plot above, but I don’t want to spoil it, because you really should read this! When I came down to this on my TBR pile, I have to admit, I caught myself thinking, “teenage-vampire-all-girl-school… why have I said yes to reading this?” It’s not really my cup of tea, but maybe it is after all, because it was really good. What really did it for me, is that it was actually quite creepy and scary at times. I really don’t get enough horror stuff sent my way, and I realize I miss it. Also the artwork is exceptional, it’s so beautiful, so professional, very gripping. Most of it is black and grey, and occasionally lots of red, when it gets scary.

I really have nothing to pick at with this, except maybe that it was too short! But I appreciate that it’s much more, and harder work to make a graphic novel compared to just writing one. Not that both things aren’t equally difficult (calm down!), but on top of writing, Cherry has to draw and color everything. I think I spent roughly 2 hours reading this, and I would have loved to read more. The ending had me hooked, bit of a cliffhanger, and I’d definitely be interested in seeing where it goes.

So yeah, if you’re into graphic novels, and teenage vampire girls (or even if you aren’t, ’cause I’m not, not really), I highly recommend this.

Check out The Legend of Dollaretta and Cherry Gunzenhauser!

Book Review: The Red Grouse Tales by Leslie W P Garland

Minor spoilers below.

This is a slightly different one. It’s a collection of four stories, told by a group of friends in a pub, The Red Grouse. I’m not quite sure if this is a gimmick, or if it’s meant to be true that Leslie sat with this people and recorded these tales (it’s kind of written like that in the forword), but regardless, I always doubt that ‘true’ stories are in fact true.

Anyways!

There are four stories, The Little Dog, The Crow, The Golden Tup, and The White Hart.

The Little Dog: This one is about a guy who works in forestry, and every day takes a ferry with his colleague and drives up into the mountain to chop down trees. The story is dragged out over a bit more than a week, and every morning and afternoon, they drive past a little dog. Our protagonist likes the dog, feeds him, and generally looks forward to seeing him, whereas the colleague, who’s an insufferable bastard in general, doesn’t. Without trying to spoil to much, the story twist towards our bastard colleague being suspected of a crime, which also involves the dog.

This was probably my favourite of the four stories. It’s quite a thriller for a while, until the end (which I really didn’t like, or get, though I understand what was implied). It’s quite a long story, (the longest I think), and it’s highly descriptive, and often drawn out (as are all of them). I find this type of writing is VERY hit and miss, because if all the descriptions and added information isn’t very relevant, I become very bored. But I’ll put that on me, just not my style.

The Crow: This one is about a boy who goes to visit an old Irish priest, on his death bed, and for some reason (which I didn’t get or can’t remember), want the priest to tell him about a guy called Reginald Monday, a person who our protagonist learned about in school. The whole story is basically just the priest telling us about Reginald’s life, from he was young until he died. I found none of it interesting at all, I was waiting for something (anything!) to happen, and realized too late it wasn’t going to. The priest, as I said, is Irish, and his written with a very heavy accent. I don’t mind it, it was very well done, but it gets very tiring to read when it’s constantly, and how come no one else has accents? Seems this is often the case (in all writing), that we just highlight people with thick/heavy accents), and leave everyone else speaking the Queen’s English.

Also, the priest can’t remember our protagonist’s name, so he calls him “young what’s’yer’name”, which is fine, but he does it constantly, in every other sentence. No one speaks like that, do they?

The Golden Tup: This was my second favourite! It’s about a young couple who buys a farm and tries to live off the land, and it’s told from the perspective of their neighbour who visits them regularly. Things are fine to begin with, until ‘Gabriel’ starts helping out the young couple. Mrs Neighbour doesn’t know who Gabriel is, and she’s lived in the valley for years, so she finds this strange. And he’s never around when she’s visiting. As the couple’s relationship starts unravelling, a journal found outside in the barn, reveals that ‘Gabriel’ might be much older than first thought, and that there’s been weird things going on at the farm for years.

This was a much more pleasant read than The Crow, it read like a thriller/horror story. Again like the first one, it’s quite long, quite extensive, with lots of descriptions, lots of thoughts about the things that are going on. I’m not saying those things shouldn’t be an integral part of any novel, I just feel like they should serve a purpose – but again, I’ll take that upon myself that it’s a thing I don’t like.

The White Hart: This, like The Crow, felt like a whole lot of talking about nothing. It’s told as three separate incidents, all part of one story, about a guy who saves a deer, then meets a girl at a chapel, and then sees a girl in a forest. The implication is that the ghost of the last girl, is the deer, and that the girl from the chapel asks the guy to save the ghost’s soul. Or something. Most of it drown in the guy just ogling the girl and thinking about her beautiful curves and what he’d like to do to her.

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To conclude – two pretty decent stories, and two that were for me, not so much. I felt like all of this was written a bit too much as if it was told to you in a pub (which obviously is the deal). For example, very often a person would be referred to as he/him/his and then it would clarify in brackets behind who the person was. This happened a lot, and made it harder to read. If it’s not clear who we’re talking about, just use the name in the first place. It also happened occasionally with words, as to explain them in brackets, with a simpler synonym. At this point, I think you just need to have some more faith in your readers.

Anyway – I recommend you go check these out, see if you can appreciate them more than me, I always hope people can prove me wrong when I’m not satisified myself, though the two I liked were really good.

The Red Grouse Tales by Leslie W P Garland

You’ve already made it

Sometimes I get really fed up with the way people perceive writing and writers. I’m talking about (mostly) other authors, on Twitter and Facebook and Instragram and where ever, and I get that they’re trying to be motivating, but I feel like writing, as a form of art, has an unhealthy perspective. You’ll see a lot of people posting, reblogging and retweeting various motivational posters and memes, or writing status, along the lines of:

“Keep going, keep writing, one day you’ll be published, keep querying, if at first you don’t succeed, write another book.”

And I get it, I do. I post a lot of the stuff myself, because it’s helpful, it’s motivational and inspiring to see or know where other people are, and to see how other people work. It makes you feel less alone, and like you’re on the right track.

But at the same time, I think – If you’ve written a book, you’ve already made it.

I get that in some people’s eyes, in a lot of people’s eyes actually, traditional publishing is the only thing that matters. I get that for indie published authors, the amount of 5 stars you have, and the amount of books you’ve written makes you seem more professional. But if someone told you they were a painter, would you ask them what gallery they were exhibited in? Or if someone says they play a lot of classical music on piano, and in fact they’ve just taught themselves another piece by Mozart, would you ask them where they perform? Isn’t it odd that when it comes to writing, the writing itself is never considered much of a feat? Or is it just me that sees it this way?

Of course I understand that there’s a lot of work that comes after the writing – the editing, the publishing, the marketing and so on. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t written and are not an author. It just means that maybe those things come second to your art? Couldn’t it mean that?

I for one know I’d be much more satisifed with writing a great book few people read than the other way around. It’s not to say we don’t all as authors, long for success, but could we just take a moment to pat ourselves on the back and say, well done?

..It seems like that’s what everyone else is doing..

Book Review: Proof by Ted D. Berner

As always – be aware of spoilers.

Plot: Tyler Larson comes across a verse in the Bible, sending him across the world hunting for the truth about what he’d grown up to believe was myth.

Before I go on in detail about the plot, let me just say, this book surprised me. I walked into this one a bit hesitantly, seeing as it it’s about hidden mysteries found in the Bible, I wasn’t quite sure which direction it would take. I’m glad to say it’s an amazing mystery novel, that I really liked!

Longer plot: Ty Larson comes across a a verse in Genesis 6:4 that reads (among other things): “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Ty is doing a course in archaeology at college, and decides to focus his assignment around this verse. He begins following up on the verse by visiting his old priest, (who dismisses the verse as nonsense), but the Deacon at the Church leads him down another path. The more research Tyler does, the more convinced he becomes, there’s something bigger behind this – talk about giants, Nephilim, about old civilizations moving giant megaliths with ‘magical’ powers. Eventually, his father and the CIA becomes involved, when they realize Tyler is being followed. Who’s trying to get to him, and why are they surveillancing him? Who’s pulling the strings in this mystery, and are the giants of mention in Genesis real? Did they ever exist?

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As I mentioned – this novel surprised me. It’s really, really good. I didn’t expect this much, but I really couldn’t put it away. I was nearly late for work one morning because I’d been up trying to get through this. It’s so intricate, so detailed, and the hystorical/archaeological/mythical is so well put together and thought through. I can’t really say much about the religious aspects, because I don’t know anything about that, but I guess it’s not for nothing that Berner spent 4 years researching for this book. It’s such a well written and captivating book, it really does make you want to carry on reading.

Was there things I didn’t like? The pace can be seen as a bit slow I suppose at some times, but it’s not that really bothered me. There was a chapter that’s essentially just Tyler’s assignment, listed in full, which serves as a good rounding up of what he’s thinking and the research he’s done, but might come across as a bit of an info dump, depending on how much attention you’ve been paying. I can imagine some people have problems with the ending – I won’t reveal too much, but let’s just say I assume there’s a follow-up book. There’s more than a few things left unsolved, and personally, I thought the ending might go in a completely different direction. Though I really enjoyed the historical aspects of where the ending does go (he said, trying not to give away anything), I thought maybe more things would happen in the second to last country Tyler ends up in. (This is probably very confusing if you haven’t read the book – go read it!)

Regardless, it’s a magnificent story that I’d happily recommend to any fan of historical/archaeological/Biblical/religious/mythical mysteries. Top shelf stuff – Go check out Proof the Novel by Ted Berner!