Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 29

The Writing Life: Travel as Inspiration

For a long time I did not travel. My memories of flight were fuzzy – laying my jacket down on the floor and sleeping between the seats on a flight across the Atlantic in 1974. The weird sensation of the ground I walked on not being solid, the vague bounce I had never previously experienced in my short life.

I did not fly internationally again until I was 29. I went to Egypt. Climate, Culture, Cuisine and Architecture were all so very different. (I could say Construction, as a stretch to keep it all C’s.) When I travel now, those are my touchstones, the points of comparison and contrast.

The incredible thing was total immersion into an environment utterly different from the only one I had ever known. The heat I had never met before in Scotland. The sounds of worship filling the air. The smell of sweet flavoured tobaccos. Making my way solo across Cairo in various taxis that looked like demolition derby entrants, on roads that had no discernible rules, where traffic lights (those that functioned) were merely for show, the real rule being to hit the gap before the other guy. All in all I was amazed at how few collisions there were. Cars shared the road with camels, sheep, or goats being herded hither and yon. I learned enough Arabic to direct my cab the last few streets home to the house where I was staying. It being expected that I could do that!

And of course, flowing through it all, the massive weight of history. The pyramids, the temples at Luxor, which I reached at the other end of a long and interesting train journey, with some toilets that horrified the French ladies I shared a carriage with. The first class toilets, mind you. The dutch lads who talked books with me for hours. The Valley of the Kings, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, the constant calls for baksheesh, a felucca ride on the Nile where the two gents taking me out onto the waters extolled the virtues of various nations’ women, after having a very loaded conversation with me in which I wondered if I could risk swimming to shore if things went south. The irony of visiting my friends in a 5 star hotel in Luxor as Pink Floyd’s “Money” played over the sound system. (I stayed in a pension across town). The hospitality of another family that was wonderful, playing soccer in a dusty field with Egyptian children who laughed at Scottish football as “kick and run!” The cryptospiridium I suffered for the last week, probably as a result of eating their food. And then for another two weeks after I got back home – that gave me time to read all the existing Wheel of Time books I’d taken, but not touched when on my travels, as there had simply been too much to take in.

I adore and absorb as much as I can from travel and history shows on TV. I read articles and do research on different cultures, now and in the past, and these activities provide a great deal of inspiration, and fire my imagination, as well as making me somewhat jealous of Anthony Bourdain (except when he is eating unmentionables); but actually going to places, experiencing their food as far as you dare, and seeing ancient sites in person, feeling the human scale of them, envisioning how people once lived in those environments when they were new, is irreplaceable. Everywhere I go I seek out inspiration, I look for locations or traces of lives that can feed my imagination, and can be transformed into realms fantastical. Churches, castles, graveyards and catacombs are catnip to me. Ruined towns or temple complexes are heaven. Egypt is so old it has roman graffiti at its ancient sites, which made me daydream of roman tourists (or a couple of bored legionnaires who always seem to have London accents), being equally impressed by ancient statues of Rameses II, and sharing the same instinct we still see today to leave their name on structures far older than they. (Black pen marks on stairwells in Parisian churches spring to mind). These things tie us together, despite distance and time, the human experience has some universal aspects, and travel has helped me feel those connections, just as it has illuminated how differently we can lead our lives, right now across our world, and even more so as we drill back through time. All of that is incredible grist to the writing fantasy fiction mill.

So if you can, travel. If you can’t travel: read, and watch, and try to put yourself in the shoes of those strangers living in strange lands. It is amazing how often story ideas grow from that single activity. Keep feeding your imagination, and hopefully those vivid ideas that become great stories will arise.

Why I Write Fantasy: The Christmas Presents Edition

In the late 2000s there were two years in a row when my sister sent me fantasy novels for Christmas. These are always welcome, and the choices both years were excellent and made a lasting impression on me, enough for me to consider them contemporary influences: books so good they raised the bar, made me realize I had to put a lot more work in if I was going to step into the same arena.

I regard the two books, and the authors, as halves of an intensely intimidating whole that I read back to back, as I managed to ignore the 2007 bookish present until after I had read the 2008 present.

2008 brought me Brent Weeks and the Night Angel Trilogy, a masterclass in relentless plot development. The narrative did not let me go. The cliffhangers seemed endless and forced me to keep turning pages. I simply had to know what was going to happen next! The acknowledgements pages were so wittily written I decided immediately to not bother with any of my own. I liked his honesty in the interview lodged at the back of the paperback, and the fact that Shakespeare was an influence – how can he not be?

But back to the books. The trilogy did a fantastic job of introducing its ideas, building on them, and using them to fuel the fire of further dramatic twists and dilemmas. I have not read them in a long time now, but the bones remain ingrained in my memory. The characters live, the problems are immediate, the storytelling infectious and, beneath the hood, brilliantly structured. I really wondered after reading the trilogy if I could possibly match his achievement.

Then I picked up the gift from 2007,   by Patrick Rothfuss. Damn. The writing is beautiful. The world just so alluring. The framing deceptively simple. But the writing, the writing is just exquisite. I don’t often weep at the greatness of a sentence, but when I do, it’s probably from Patrick Rothfuss. If Alan Moore is correct, and artists and the tellers of stories are magicians, that the power of words is in their ability to alter the consciousness of others, and that power is not something to be abused or treated lightly, then Patrick Rothfuss is a magician. His words are placed together with utmost care for absolutely maximum impact. His prose is magical, making reading a joy even as challenging ideas are sprinkled innocuously through the text. He can take as long as he wants to get Kingkiller Vol. 3 right, because outside of Conrad and David Foster Wallace I have not encountered a writer who so perfectly crafts his work.

The combined effect of these two writers upon me was quite profound. I didn’t write for over a year. I didn’t see the point, they had every base covered between them, and I could not hold a fricken’ candle to the monster that those combined books became in my mind. I forgot that every voice has its place, and the choir of humanity welcomes many voices . Eventually I remembered, when I looked over a two page fragment of an idea I had written in 2005, and it sparked something in me, so in one afternoon I turned it into a 34 page outline for The Thief and The Demon.

As a result I consider these two authors to be strong influences upon my own work. I had to recover from them, and learn again to have faith in my own voice after being so thoroughly blown away by theirs. It was difficult at the time, but I am a better and stronger writer for it.

The Writing Life: Letting Go of Your First Love

The first love you wrote, I mean. Of course, many authors successfully publish their first loves, and do astoundingly well. For others there is another story, of a first, or first and second and more novels written and discarded, before a book is released to the reading world. I’m guessing that one of those discarded novels was The One, and setting it aside was tough for those writers to do.

I had a few stabs at writing longer tales before I wrote my own first true storytelling love. The story of Lyn, lost in the mists of memory. It involved stone circles, maybe, but no time travel. The chronicle of a resurrected evil wizard that was not exactly a complete rewrite of the story of Kalarr cu Ruruc from Peter Morwood’s The Horse Lord, except with Kalarr as the hero. (He was such a great villain! He shouldn’t have died so soon! For the second time!) Then there were the two actual novels I wrote as a teen, but only after all of those attempts came The Crystal Fruit, my first true writing love.

I’ve read that passion projects, the story you have always wanted to write, should not be your first novel, and I can understand that advice: you often need to learn your craft before being able to do your passion project justice. I spent fifteen intermittent years on The Crystal Fruit before putting it into mothballs. I hope someday to retrieve it. So, as you can see, I’m still not entirely over it.

Just like a first love, I think that in writing nothing is ever quite the same as that first novel you pour your heart and soul into, even if you never publish it. It remains, shining in your memory as a dream of what might have been, or as a nightmarish reminder of what can go horribly wrong.

As a novel, The Thief and The Demon is like a relationship where you get it right, work at it, and see it through. The unanticipated rush of first love isn’t there, but the passion ignites just the same, the thrill and excitement, but this time the lasting joy of a real love gets forged. This time the book can stand alone when you’ve finished it, not collapse under its own weight like a badly built card house.

But how did I let go of my first literary love? I submitted it to agents. In my heart I knew I was done with it, it had occupied my mind for too long and had grown stale, but I couldn’t quit it. So I needed others to reject it for me, external voices I could not persuade to give me six more months to make it right. A variety of agents very politely did that for me. The tricky part would have been if someone had been interested! I’d have had to show them my high-concept/what the hell? ending! That would have been an interesting day!

So maybe some of you are struggling to let go of a project you know in your heart isn’t working. Maybe your writing group has analyzed it to death and you still can’t settle on a final form. Or maybe you are too close to it and have lost perspective. You know what? Research query letters, polish the opening’s basic grammar and submit it! Either way you win – if it gets rejected, you can move on with a clean slate. If someone is interested – then you know you were being too hard on yourself and have the external validation to press on and make it happen. Score.

So thank you agents: there is another role you perhaps accidentally fulfill in the writing world, helping tired authors like me put their first loves behind them!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Suitcase of Treasures, Part 2

Last week, I wrote about the green suitcase in our garage that yielded two world-changing books, the first of which was Nine Princes in Amber. The second book I found in that fateful suitcase (and now that I write about this, it is such a strange happenstance to have so impacted an impressionable child) was not the first in a classic series, but the second: Patricia McKillip’s Heir of Sea and Fire. I read over and over again about land rulers, a dead king wanting his skull back, wizards who spent hundreds of years as trees, Ghisteslwchlohm, (If you need to find a reason for my own multi-syllabled wizards – look no further than big G.) and shapeshifters of mysterious intent. And Riddlemasters, in a college that managed to make all the arts into a riddle course – which, to be honest, sometimes seems fair, except there should never be a single answer.

As with Nine Princes I searched in vain for the other books in the series, and then, five years later I was in John Menzies on Princes Street in Edinburgh and I found it: a new edition of the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy sitting on a shelf, with Heir of Sea and Fire set between these two other books in an unfamiliar cover. I thought – who is this Riddlemaster of Hed? Raederle is the heroine! Then I remembered all the references to that Morgon guy. He seemed a bit dull, but did show up with powerfully gathered muscles and a cool sword at the end of Heir. Raederle was where it was at for me, facing off absentee dads, dead kings, and people made of shells and seaweed! Who was this Morgon guy? In my mind I had created pre and post stories for Raederle and Morgon, and in a sense had been quite happy with them. I think that’s what the kids nowadays refer to as ‘Headcanon’.

Patricia McKillip’s world, filled with arresting imagery, strong women, powerful minds, and allusions to long histories not always explained, utterly enchanted me. The wizards and dead kings especially hung in my memory, but also the leading lady front and centre. My original main character, in a story I think I began even before my first attempt at a novel, was a young woman called Lyn. I think that can be attributed to Raederle more than anything else, though the leading ladies of Pern will also have been an influence! (Was Dragonflight also in that suitcase, I wonder? I begin to suspect so.) I have no idea now what happened in Lyn’s tale, but I have it somewhere, 30 odd pages of scrawl on UK A4 sized paper, wide ruled. (I graduated to using the narrow ruled for writing later. I felt very grown up!)

The writing in Heir of Sea and Fire is so evocative, like catching a dream on paper with images of flashing light and liquid shadow, poetry in prose so alluring it makes your mind drift and dance to its rhythms at times, that it was and is for me an intoxicant. And Patricia McKillip has only grown more skilled as a writer with the passing of time, a vivid economy of word, idea, and emotion that I can only admire, and seek, one day, to begin to emulate. Not in her style of course, that is all her own!

Two books, found in a musty suitcase at the back of a garage, have had an outsized effect on my imagination, and along with the core influences of fairytales, Tolkien, and Lewis, are inescapable influences on my writing life, for which I am very grateful. Reading them in isolation, away from the context of their companion novels, led me to a great focus on the detail of each, and that focus has lingered in the way in which I approach fantasy, I think. My imaginings (all forgotten now) of how their stories could have gone were very different from how the authors resolved them, but the shards of those thoughts and memories may still have an effect on what I choose to write, or how I employ certain characters and images. I wanted so much more on the Lungold wizards – so I have created a world full of them! Other striking books and authors have come along, and I shall mention them in future columns, but when I look at what I write, it is easy for me to see the traces of Nine Princes of Amber, and Heir of Sea and Fire. I consider that no bad thing.

The Writing Life: Being True to Your Instincts

As I’ve said in other articles, I’ve known forever that I would be a writer, and that I would write fantasy stories. Apart from one cathartic journey into writing nursing fiction, which still had elements of the fantastical (how many nurses find themselves talking to the devil and questioning their own sanity?), all of my stories have been straight up fantasy with high, dark, epic, or grim twists. Those are just the stories I find myself drawn to tell, and the form of expression that comes most naturally to me.

I have read that it can be a mistake not to research your market in advance of writing your novel, and I can see that could be true if your aim is to catch a popular wave and find many readers quickly. Despite this undoubtedly wise advice, it never occurred to me to try to write to a specific market, or to aim at an open niche.

Instead, I worked hard at creating The Thief and The Demon, something I strongly believe in, and that I think many people will enjoy. (Some already have!) And I believe very strongly that for me, this was the right thing to do, that if I was going to produce and share my best writing, I needed to stay true to my instincts, the choices of subject and expression that made the most sense to me, and that I was best equipped to bring to life on the page.

With that same philosophy, I’ve already started to write my next book, The Killer and The Dead. It is not upbeat. It’s a grim story, set in a slum of people condemned to feed the dead. It’s a story about family, and sacrifice, and hate becoming something else, something better, if not actual love. This book, also set in the World Belt, is the one that demands to be written right now, and if I tried to write something else, then that other story would be poisoned by my thoughts returning to The Killer and The Dead, over and over again.

It is the spirit of Roger Zelazny telling me to experiment with my writing, to challenge myself, to become a better writer going forward. I want to try a first person perspective, so I will. Part of me would love to jump on to something else brighter in tone, and the book I plan to follow TKATD with hits that mark, but right now this is what draws and excites me, and to do anything else would be foolish. I need to stay true to my instincts, and own them, and accept that maybe The Killer and The Dead isn’t the wisest business choice of next book in my writing career, but it is the one I’m called to do. The bottom line that we are so often told in the maelstrom of writing and publishing advice is to write a great book, tell a strong story. Everything else is built upon that foundation. I think I have that in TKATD, so I’m pursing it with everything I’ve got.

I hope you all can find your way to the best expression of your selves in writing and in life, and find it filled with power and meaning, because that is the greatest feeling in the world. Good luck!

Why I Write Fantasy: A Suitcase of Treasures, Part 1

In the mid 70s I lived for a couple of years in the USA. When we moved back to Scotland, a large green suitcase came with us. This piece of luggage lived in our garage for years, and when I eventually explored it, I discovered that among the many odds and ends it housed were quite a few books. Two in particular caught my eye, and came to have a lasting effect on me. Both were parts of a series, and for years I did not have access to the other books in those series, and so read and re-read these books in splendid isolation.

The first was Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. I was utterly captivated by it. Like Tolkien and Lewis, he offered a vision of our world connected to something much grander, filled with mystery and magic, just the turn of a corner, or a page away. Corwin is just the most fun to be with as he tells you his tale, a rich saga of betrayal, heroic failure, (the assault on Kolvir with Bleys is just immense!) and the beginnings of revenge. Because I only read this first book in the series for about six years, I spent a lot of time imagining what was going to happen next, how Eric was going to be defeated and what Corwin would do once he had triumphed. For years I searched in used book stores for more of the series and came up empty. Then I happened into a Forbidden Planet shop in the early 80s, idly looking yet again, and was shocked and incredibly excited to find all five books (I had no idea there would be five) sitting there on a shelf, waiting to be bought! One mad dash home to collect my saved paper-round money, and they were mine! Little did I know I was going to meet a bird who discussed Schopenhauer, or how many years would pass before I understood the reference!

Roger Zelazny’s writing sings to me. “I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms…” That line stuns me every time. There are so many more. His willingness to experiment inspires me. His ability to pack so many ideas, actions and adventure into relatively few words (his novels, for all their incident, tend to be short), is intimidating. I love his humour, am dazzled by his intelligence, awed by his facility with language, and feel grateful to have found his writing and been so transported by it. My desire to create undersea cities is entirely down to him and Rebma! He is one of my literary heroes, a master from whom I hope I have learned much.

But what of the other novel I dug out of that suitcase, shoving aside multiple books by Lobsang Rampa to get my paws on an intriguing cover of a woman in white emerging from the sea? That can wait until next time!

Why I write Fantasy: A suitcase of treasures, Part 1

In the mid 70s I lived for a couple of years in the USA. When we moved back to Scotland, a large green suitcase came with us. This piece of luggage lived in our garage for years, and when I eventually explored it, I discovered that among the many odds and ends it housed were quite a few books. Two in particular caught my eye, and came to have a lasting effect on me. Both were parts of a series, and for years I did not have access to the other books in those series, and so read and re-read these books in splendid isolation.

The first was Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. I was utterly captivated by it. Like Tolkien and Lewis, he offered a vision of our world connected to something much grander, filled with mystery and magic, just the turn of a corner, or a page away. Corwin is just the most fun to be with as he tells you his tale, a rich saga of betrayal, heroic failure, (the assault on Kolvir with Bleys is just immense!) and the beginnings of revenge. Because I only read this first book in the series for about six years, I spent a lot of time imagining what was going to happen next, how Eric was going to be defeated and what Corwin would do once he had triumphed. For years I searched in used book stores for more of the series and came up empty. Then I happened into a Forbidden Planet shop in the early 80s, idly looking yet again, and was shocked and incredibly excited to find all five books (I had no idea there would be five) sitting there on a shelf, waiting to be bought! One mad dash home to collect my saved paper-round money, and they were mine! Little did I know I was going to meet a bird who discussed Schopenhauer, or how many years would pass before I understood the reference!

Roger Zelazny’s writing sings to me. “I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms…” That line stuns me every time. There are so many more. His willingness to experiment inspires me. His ability to pack so many ideas, actions and adventure into relatively few words (his novels, for all their incident, tend to be short), is intimidating. I love his humour, am dazzled by his intelligence, awed by his facility with language, and feel grateful to have found his writing and been so transported by it. My desire to create undersea cities is entirely down to him and Rebma! He is one of my literary heroes, a master from whom I hope I have learned much.

But what of the other novel I dug out of that suitcase, shoving aside multiple books by Lobsang Rampa to get my paws on an intriguing cover of a woman in white emerging from the sea? That can wait until next time!

The Writing Life: It Takes a Team

I tried for years to transform my writing from manuscript to novel on my own, and for years it did not work. Eventually, I recognized that I needed a team. Only through accepting this, that I was not equipped to do it alone, did I finally flourish…and I intend to do a whole lot more flourishing with my team going forward!

So I’d like to thank my team, here and now, for their help in making my dream real, and getting The Thief and The Demon published.

First: my dear old mum, the original cheerleader, the most resiliently unrealistic fan who still maintains my manuscripts written at 14 are works of art. Without her, I would never have had the confidence to get here. She is the wellspring from which my writing life originally flowed, and remains my biggest fan.

Second: my wife, who not only believes in my writing, but as an avid reader of fantasy also has the ability to point out flaws, and as a professional writer to suggest improvements. That I do not always follow her advice is on me. (Sometimes it’s justified, honest!) There was an incident in Rome where she told me a lot of truth I did not want to hear at the time, but I am much better for it now. Her contributions are immense and almost innumerable. I am a very lucky man.

My long-time friends, Dave, Andy, Matt, and newer friend Shelly, for supporting my ideas and my dreams, some after hearing me whitter on for years about this book or that with almost infinite patience, and then for being my beta readers, and giving me the feedback I needed. I knew you guys couldn’t be objective, but I love that you tried!

The folks at Critters who helped me learn how to critique strangers’ work, and critique it with kindness. That was an invaluable lesson. And for being the first truly objective voices of outside reason when contemplating my book. Those insights stuck with me and helped shape a lot of what came after.

My editor in book form, Don McNair, whose book Editor-Proof Your Writing was an invaluable first step for me in really getting to grips with the mechanics of my writing, and learning how to tighten it up. I’d owned other guides to writing earlier in my life, but either I’d been unreceptive to their lessons, or had barely cracked them open. Don’s book, with its 21 steps, took me down a new road, because finally I was ready to learn, and it improved me as a writer immeasurably.

My real-life editor, Jeff Seymour, who worked with me on the developmental and line edit passes of my book, and helped to transform it yet again. Together we sanded smooth the rough edges, modified  sections, and changed emphasis to strengthen the overall story and its presentation. He also provided me with guidance to help maintain a uniformity of style when I had been switching between choices and uncertain which way to finally fall. Hiring him was the best decision I’ve made in my writing career. I needed outside professional help, and he provided it, along with cheerful email conversations, in spades. Thank you, Jeff.

My cover designer, James T. Egan at Bookfly design. (We middle T.’s have to stick together!) I had searched for cover designers for a long time, but found nothing to match my taste until I saw his portfolio. I gave him a rough idea of what I’d like, including the idea of using a clan belt to honor my Scottish roots; he did the rest, and did it amazingly well. The Celtic knotwork, the keyhole, the flame, were all his ideas and matched perfectly with the content and themes of the book. Moreover, he was very responsive to design discussion, and allowed me to go into any amount of detail with good grace and patience. I could not ask to work with a better partner in creating the imagery to represent my world.

My formatter, Rob Siders of 52Novels. Like James, he displayed great patience with a newcomer to the field, helping to answer my questions while producing flawlessly formatted ebook and print editions of my novel, that are not only functional, but attractive (especially the print edition, which I think looks amazing), to make the act of reading a pleasure, in every format. And he, like James, was great to work with on last-minute corrections and revisions, and handled everything with efficiency and good humour. A professional who was so easy to work with, it made the last difficult round of proofing and corrections, if not a joy, then at least a task taken on with relish, because the end was in sight, and help was at hand. His work made the stress of uploading the books to Amazon non-existent, because everything went off without a hitch.

And finally, you – my readers, my friends and family and first buyers and reviewers – you are all part of my team too, and without each and every one of you, I would be greatly diminished.

Thank you all.

Why I Write Fantasy: Primal Influences

Like so many others, it is the tales that captured me as a child that have led me to this place where I declare myself a fantasy writer.

There were fairy tale collections, those of Grimm and Andersen, and the Ladybird Well-Loved Tales series that each came in their own slim-line hard back with wonderful illustrations of a fancifully medieval Jack hastening away from a most angry giant, or the redoubtable little red hen facing off against the sly fox. Other tales of odder ancestry came in old hardback covers, like my favourite – It Happened One Day, which I long ago lost, (and have just bought the 1954 edition online!) but the individual tales still linger strongly in my mind. I loved The Water Babies for its pure escapism and adventure, (I was oblivious to its crude racism as a boy) along with Alice and her Tenniel illustrated adventures.

But what made me a writer of fantasy were these two classics: The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia. Read and re-read as a child. The idea of wild lands of the imagination, filled with their own history, mystery, and wonders was what captured me then, and still does. With the Narnia books you could indulge in the fantasy of literally leaving this world behind as the Pevensie children did. In the Hobbit, Bilbo was there as your stand-in, with the talk of post offices and tea times a framing that made it seem like Tolkien’s world did, somewhere, blend into our own. In one land you riddled with a dragon, in the other, you became a dragon, complete with regretful tears and a sore arm!

The Hobbit I still adore (though the references to modernity seem much more jarring now), the Chronicles of Narnia strike me as an adult as rather heavy-handed in their allegory, but I love them for the memories they evoke – reading until falling asleep, then waking to read again until I had to fall out of bed and run down the road to school, having put my uniform on and got back into bed to read just a little bit more after wolfing down my breakfast! For years I could only read the first 70 pages of Prince Caspian, as the book had fallen apart and the second half was lost, but still I came back to it, and imagined the ways the story would go, what gaps I could fill between it and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, my childhood favourite, though The Silver Chair and The Last Battle ran it close.

And try as I might, (and I did), I never quite found my waking way to Narnia or Middle-Earth. But what was born in me was the desire to see other strange lands of the imagination, to read other books like those early classics, and what I found became the second wave of stories that inspired me to write my own.

My Book has Launched!

The day has finally arrived. Hard to believe after all this time that the work of writing is done, and I am a published author. My book, The Thief and The Demon, is now available for sale as an e-Book and paperback, online at Amazon.com. It still seems crazy to say that.

Now that the creative work is complete, it’s time to encourage people to buy The Thief and The Demon, and I’m learning how to do that. On my website there is a handy little button just to the right of this text. You know the one, the ‘a’ with a smiley arrow beneath it (you may be seeing it right now!). Press it and you will find my book waiting for you. On my Facebook author page, look for the blue “Shop Now” button, or visit my shop for links to all the book’s formats. Yes, I have a Facebook shop, which is hilarious to me. The book also has an entry in goodreads, along with a terse, non-spoilery review. You can’t buy from directly from there, (though of course there is a button leading to you know where!), but it’s another way to get the word out.

As people buy my book (and a few strong supporters already have – thank you!), it’s becoming real for others, not just what I imagined they might think of it, but actually theirs. As I’ve said in other blogs, the book is now no longer my own, and that makes me very happy. I truly do look forward to your thoughts, whatever they are. Although everyone says not to read reviews, I know myself well enough to understand that there is zero possibility I won’t look. I just will. Maybe not immediately, but sooner or later, I’ll feel brave enough, and click… And I will try to take the advice of thousands, and not get sucked into answering the negative reviews when they inevitably come, but will try to learn from them, to become a better writer.

No book is universally lauded, or loved. I think I’ve produced something that many will like, but not all. It has champions already, though I believe that they have some discernable bias! I hope it finds its way into friendly hands and eyes.

Why am I not leaping up and down with wild excitement? Because I am calm. I am content. I am an author. And I know there is a lot more work to be done. I will be giddy when I’ve earned it, though I admit it is breaking through here and there despite my best efforts to stay focused on the many tasks at hand!

Thank you all for reading, and I hope for taking the next steps of the journey with me, into life as a published author. Have a beautiful day. I know I will!