Jen Black's Blog, page 4

Pretty lights are springing up

 Now December is here,

Pretty Lights are springing up everywhere. The main street of the town has formally declared Christmas is coming and the internet is jammed, presumably with people buying presents and goodies  in advance. The weather alternates between freezing the extremities and then days of 13 degrees C as we had yesterday which made the pigeons think it was spring and the males started
pestering the females. I did a spot of weeding in an attempt to keep the weeds down for the coming year. 

I'm still tracking my family tree and fascinated with the level of detail there is to be found. I discovered a great aunt I never heard of who died at 3 years 10 months old in 1871 - and found a picture of her headstone in Escomb cemetery. Her parents were married in Escomb Parish church, which I think is the old Saxon church. I didn't know that when I visited there years ago.

Chasing ancestors is a fascinating hobby.

What's acceptable changes

 

Does anyone else feel that writing a book is far, far easier than trying to sell it?

I suspect there are many reasons why sales go up and down and one of them is changing tastes. I never would have believed back in the day that I would be reading urban fantasy in 2024, but I am, and enjoying it.

All my life I've bought books and promised myself I would only buy and keep the books I wanted to re-read. Now I am starting to feel guilty because apart from Dunnett and the occasional Rankin - oh, yes and Mary O'Hara and her delightful My Friend Flicka, I have re-read hardly any of them. The books are beginning to haunt me, because nobody lives forever, and even if I started today, would I get them all re-read in time? And would I enjoy them today as I did back whenever I bought them? Chances are I would not. People change, tastes change, writing styles change and what's acceptable changes. 

To get back to the problem of selling the books after you've written them - well, it ain't easy. Try Googling "marketing e-books" for yourself and see how many pages  of helpful hints and tips spring up on your screen. Testament to how hard it is, I think. The market is overcrowded with e-books of every type and description, including the aforementioned urban fantasy.

The mysteries of one's past

 Instead of working hard on my new story (which already has 8 thousand plus words written) I have been side lined into checking my family tree these last few days.

I've started this before but this time I stuck in and checked the four grandparents back as far as I can, and astonishingly, one tracks back to 1485. The most astonishing thing is that it is the string I thought least likely to go anywhere. 

I'm always wary of these people who claim to be descended from some historical figure way back in the 12th century, so I've double checked forward and backwards (so that grandparent, parent and child match each other.) Apart from that I don't know how to prove the links. Any ideas would be welcome. The lady on the right, in the smart hat, is Mary Weston, my maternal grandmother. If anyone recognises the children in the two pictures below, do let me know as I haven't a clue who they are!

Killing keyboards

It seems to the 70 thousand odd words of my latest offering in the book stakes have been too much for my keyboard. It gives me all sorts of gibberish which makes getting on with my new story - a murder mystery this time - frustrating. Missing words abound. Spaces don't appear where they should. One letter is repeated, at speed, for a whole line until I can stop the wretched thing. The first time it happened I had half a page of ffffffffffs!

This must be the third keyboard I've killed. But then, when you think of all the 16 stories I have written with them, most with more than one draft and all of them over 70k words and one as long as 120k, then it isn't surprising that a £12 keyboard gives up the ghost.

So I have taken the plunge and ordered a new, rather higher quality item. It is several times the price of the ones I have been using. 

So, I am up to 4,000 words on the the new story. Jess and Rory are getting to grips with the murder of Fintan Balfe, leader of a Ceilidh band.
 

Tongue in Cheek

 

29th October is my birthday and it is also the day my latest story is released via Amazon Kindle.

The title may be tongue in cheek  but I think it is fun. It is currently on pre-order and I have until 25th to send in the final final draft. I've done 8 drafts so far, so the final one will be the 9th. I almost know the 70k plus words off by heart!

Once this is cleared away on my pc I am going to start thinking about another murder mystery. My other half suggested a murder in a brewery which sort of suggests where his  centre of interest lies these days. I keep thinking of all sorts of places to discover a body but so far not one of them has really clicked with me so I'll keep thinking. 

Aside from writing, I'm enjoying autumn in the countryside walking with my dog.

Ozymandias in a northern park

The Griffins at Wallingtonby Simon Currie These chimeras were broughtfrom Bishopsgate for ballast:an empty collier sailing backLondon to Newcastle. Ozymandias in a northern park,four heads rest on sober grassas if, landlocked icebergs,their bodies bulked below. No more than emblems,they face rude frosts,gaze from blank orbsthat give away nothing. So odd, they make strangersappear familiar, ghostscome back from years agoto stare them out.


The four carved limestone griffin heads that glare across the lawns at Wallington Hall in Northumberland date back to the 16th century. They were brought back from Bishopsgate, London, around 1760 as ballast in one of Sir Walter Blackett's returning colliers. The heads were first used to ornament the surroundings of Rothley Castle - a folly constructed in the eighteenth century deer park at Rothley which is now outside the property. The heads were subsequently moved to a site near the Chinese Pond inside the grounds, to the east of Wallington Hall. It is said they were moved to a spot in the woods and that their wings are still somewhere nearby. They finally found their current resting place on the east lawn in 1928.There are four of them, each slightly different all staring out to the rising sun. The photograph is mine.

 

Switching genres

 There's such a lot to learn when switching genres. 

I am busy doing research and the police would think me a serial killer if they they looked at my research folders on my PC. Titles like Forensics, Poisons, decomposition rates, and fingerprints abound. 

I can think of plots but so far nothing has really grabbed my attention. So much has already been done so it is very hard to find a new angle on killing someone. I am discovering authors in the genre and so far I've found Caroline Graham, Peter James (of the Roy Grace series) and next I'm going to try Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike fame).

I already knew L J Ross, Mari Hannah and Robert Goddard, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, Tess Gerritsen, Jack Cartwright, J M Dalgleish and Ann Cleeves but what I am delighted to find is the wide range within the genre. Some are too gruesome for me and those I avoid. Some are a tad wordy, and some are quite brief - I am always surprised when I get to the end of a Joy Ellis!

It might be right

 I am easily confused by the verb "may."

May, might. When to use?

May is the 3rd person singular in the present tense. ie "It may be true."

"You may well lose your way...."

May I come in?" (asks for permission)

"May he live to regret it..." ( a wish)

"Who are you, may I ask?" (Irony)

Might is the past tense of May (and often followed by "well" for emphasis)

Often used in reported speech expressing possibility, ie "He said he might come."

or permission, ie "He asked if he might leave."

or expressing a possibility not fulfilled, ie "if you'd looked you might have found it."

or expressing a wish, ie "You might call at the butchers."  "It might be true...."  "Might I have the pleasure of this dance?"

There are similar confusions with Shall/Should, Will/Would and Can/Could but I struggle through and I think I get it right most of the time!

It's all in the detail

 

I’m busy adding detail to an important scene in mynext historical romance story. I actually began it before I side-tracked myselfonto Friday Night Murder and now that is published on Amazon KDP, I‘ve come back to the one that currently goesunder the title of Maeve.

They do say that if thestory keeps a fast pace then the reader feels intense emotions, reads fasterand loses track of time. Every writer wants that, don’t they? So here I am, hopefullywriting a story that moves at a fast pace. The heroine has been kidnapped andin mounting a rescue, her rescuers have caused a fire. She is on the wrong sideof it and with no escape. So what happens next? I’m not sure yet, but I’m sureI’ll figure it out…

Designing characters

 Flicking through one of my notebooks this morning and found this:

Bad storytelling: 

lack of progression; false motivation; redundant characters; empty subtext .

They all result in bland, boring text. So says Robert McKee in his book STORY published in 1999 and I wouldn't dare disagree with him. Why would I? what he says is true.

Designing a story: 75% of the work goes into deciding who are the characters; what do they want; how do they go about getting it; what stops them; what are the consequences. 

I don't spend long enough on designing. I'm always so keen to get going, to start writing my characters and get into the story. Maybe I should have spent longer on the  consequences of ignoring good advice.