Leopold Borstinski's Blog, page 31

Mama’s Gone Progress Update

I just completed the Writing phase of Mama’s Gone! Now onto Editing!

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Mama nearly is gone

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I’ve been told writers shouldn’t spend their time talking about their writing, but at this point in my life, I can’t help it because I am two chapters short of a first draft. Why does this especially matter to me?

Because the sub-plots in Mama’s Gone are very close to me heart as they cover parental death and dementia. So the crafting of the denouement is of particular personal interest to me – beyond the usual desire to see the characters to the end of their logical conclusion.

If you don’t care about my travails then please ignore this note, but if this has caught your imagination then suffice to say that memory is key to the ultimate tale and – spoiler alert – there’s a funeral, but that last piece is heavily hinted in the title of the novel.

Enjoy!

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New words are official

There was a lovely piece in The Guardian this week about some new arrivals in the Oxford English Dictionary that have come from the world of film.

The compilers have added words like Tarantinoesque and Kubrikian to Visual Effects and Diagetic. I must admit I though all these terms had been around so long they must have already made it into the lexicon, but I was wrong.

Diagetic is my favourite of the new crop mainly because it covers one of the elements I really love about film: the moments when the soundtrack and the moving images coalesce. I’m thinking of the entire score to Paris, Texas or the moment in the Godfather when Michael Corleone is about to walk out of the bathroom and kill the police captain (Sterling Haydn). Just as he is about to leave, we here the crazy sounds of the New York street and the noise of a train passing by.

This scene was originally going to have music but they decided to use found sound to indicate the chaos running through Michael’s head. Marvellous.

Ciao.

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Mama’s Gone Progress Update

I just made progress on Mama’s Gone! So far I’m 94% complete on the Writing phase. 23 Days remain until the deadline.

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Mama’s Gone Progress Update

I just made progress on Mama’s Gone! So far I’m 85% complete on the Writing phase. 30 Days remain until the deadline.

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Let me introduce Becky Greene

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I’ve previously mentioned I have started working with a book cover designer on a new series – and I know I haven’t finished writing Mama’s Gone yet. Now I’d like to tell you. Little bit about the next series, which will start to be released next year.

I’m moving away from America and the past and heading into London and financial crime. We are going to follow Becky Greene as she investigates insider trading, fraud and, of course, murder and mayhem too. The first book cover is lined up and ready to go but I’m not going to reveal it just now.

Rest assured, as soon as the Lagottis are behind me, I’ll be full steam ahead into a different world but with the same sensibility where no-one does the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. My kind of people.

Enjoy!

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Problems in the Second Act

I’ve reached the point in the second act of Mama’s Gone that I find the hardest to deal with. It is usually the point where I experience what I call my writer’s block. Only this time I have responded differently to the previous few occasions.

In the past, I would have bailed from writing anything for two to four weeks, stuck in the quagmire if my own literary devising. You see the place I find stickiest is the moment when all that looks like it could go wrong has indeed gone wrong but there is no light at the end of the tunnel. All there is for the main character is a dark void of despair which happens to be in a tunnel into which light will eventually travel.

I stick because I’m never sure if I’ve over-egged the disasters befalling my characters and vacillate between thinking of gone too far and thinking that the complex web of disaster is in my head but that I haven’t managed to get the ideas into words on the page. So I freeze.

Typically, a few weeks later, I come to my senses, rejig a plot point and move on, racing to get to the finish because it’s all so very exciting. At least to me.

And what did I do differently this time? I just carried on writing, forcing myself to deal with the plot points I’d previously decided and stopped acting like a snowflake. I reminded myself of Anthony Burgess. Whether true or not, the story goes that someone asked him about his process as an author. I sit at my typewriter at 9 and finish at 5 every day.

He just got on with it. No more and no less. Sounded like a decent plan to me and, surprise, he was right. Of  course, this doesn’t mean it’ll work the next time I get stuck, but it sure as hell worked this time. Nice.

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Bookshops Aghast at Self-Published Winner

As if to prove to me that the world operates in perfect synchrony, during the last week I wondered why so many broadsheet newspapers ignore self-published authors and considered writing a letter to an appropriate reviewer to enquire why. Then I read that in France bookshop owners are up in arms because a literary award has been given to a self-published writer.

For your info, there are a much higher proportion of bookshops in France than say the UK and ebooks represent a very thin proportion of novel purchases. This translates as the French have culturally rejected the advances of Amazon as a book sales platform. The winner’s book is only available on Amazon and it is worth noting he had previously published the traditional route.

Now I’m happy that a KDP author won an award and I’m also surprised about the insular nature of the French marketplace. The reason I mention this is the negative response by the local bookshop owners. It is one thing to want to protect your livelihood and it is another to have a go at someone who has found a way to get their work into the hands of readers without going via bricks and mortar. Whether you like Amazon itself is irrelevant, ebooks are part of the future. Not the whole part but as a self-published author I can get my work into the hands of people wanting to read my novels without any intermediary. The Case is available for sale direct on the web site today. But I still respect that internet sales platforms exist and can help me. I don’t have a stand on the street corner where people from around the world come to buy my wares.

Rant off and relax.

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Images were introduced…

A quick update on the last post where I said I was looking at book cover designers. I am pleased to let you know that I have been working with James at GoOnWrite.com who has produced two excellent covers for Powder and Mama’s Gone.

He has a great feel for images and a wonderful love of typography, the latter echoes part of the geek in me too, which is a hark back to my days as a magazine editor.

Now obviously I believe the words I’ve written are quite important but no-one gets to decide that for themselves without the excellent work done by James.

Cheers mate.

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Judge a book by its cover

I’m halfway through writing Mama’s Gone, the fourth and final book in the Lagotti Family series and my mind is turning to what I’m going to do next. First there is the no small matter of marketing Powder, which is out on November 19 and then Mama’s Gone will be released March 2019.

The second task is for me to decide which series to start writing next. There’s a four-book story following the trials and tribulations of a Jewish family from 1914 to the 1960s. My other front runner is a financial crime female detective. Why mention this? Well, part of my marketing planning has involved seeking a book cover designer and I’m pleased to say I think I’ve found someone. Once everything has been sorted, I’ll tell you all more but I’m on the cusp of getting a fresh look for Powder and Mama’s Gone, which I’m very excited about.

Book cover design is an incredible set of skills which combine graphic design, typography and sufficient understanding of sales platforms like Amazon because most readers decide on their purchase based on the thumbnail image offered to them by their eBook content provider. Judge.

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