Thea Atkinson's Blog, page 16

Black Friday means a free Book from @TheaAtkinson

Just click on over to Smashwords and enter coupon code: ZQ49V to get a FREE copy of Rattling Bones

It comes in any format: Nook, Kindle, Pdf, Sony, etc. Enjoy

 

Folks: My newest woo nugget is available for free on Smashwords with coupon code: ZQ49V. It's a short story collection that I believe will appeal to the women's fiction reader who isn't afraid of a little shadow in her light read.

Please, if you've wondered whether or not the 'Thea nut' has any flavor at all, go pick up a copy and read a few stories.

 And if you want to be part of the Thea army of squirrels, please pass this blog post around, share it on Facebook, link to it on your own blogs, Stumble or Reddit, or whatever you do. I'll take anything. If you post a tweet with the hashtag #squirrelarmy I'll add you to my list and spread the word for you too!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Indie vs Traditional: equal or not?

If you follow my blog (and please do, there's something in it for ya), then you'll know I'm a writer. But you know, my labels don't stop there. I'm always amazed when I'm asked to decide whether I'm a writer or a reader on places like Goodreads or on the Amazon forums or the Kindleboards forum. Why can't I be a reader? I AM a reader. I've been reading far longer than I've been writing. I read voraciously at times, and at times, the most I read is my shampoo bottle.

Right now I'm glutting myself on brain candy because my daily mind is occupied by serious thoughts and I need to distract myself. I will admit (and please don't judge me) to being completely enthralled by the True Blood series of books. It's not great writing if you're looking for literature, but it's a great story for my poor jonesing brain.

It's not always that way though. I love all kinds of fiction and nonfiction. I have favorite authors like many readers, but since I purchased a Kindle reader, I have a different set of books than normal. I recently looked at my TBR and noticed something in common for the stack of bits and bytes that resided there. None of the books are by traditional authors. They're indie.

What is indie?

Some might say: unedited, trash, not good enough to get a real publisher.

Why, dear reader, indie can be, and often is, quite the opposite.

Indie is unleashed. It's nonconformist. It's genre bending and genre crossing and it's as exciting as going to a rock concert without a barrier keeping the fans from the band.

Many indies take their craft seriously. We're writers, after all, and we hone our craft like any writer (let's say: Alice Munro). The difference is that some writers have found fortune in the traditional sense: someone found them in a stack of papers and pulled them out and said, "Hey, this just might sell."

An indie may have been the MS right underneath that one.

I've found some real gems in the indie world and all for really great prices. I'd highly recommend any of the below:

 

Strangers and Pilgrims by Vivienne Tuffnell
Blood and Brass by Walter Shuler
Sugar and Spice by Saffina desForges
Four Years from Home by Larry Enright
Space Junque by LK Rigel
Vestal Virgin by Suzanne Tyrpak
Easy Innocence by Libby Fischer Hellman
Silas by Robert duPerre
Summoning by Debra Falkner

I really could go on and on because I've been reading indies for a whole year, but I think I'd rather let you chime in. Please list an indie that you read and loved this year and leave a title so we can go look them up.

 Squirrel Army Forward, March!

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Ratling Bones is FREE

Folks: My newest woo nugget is available for free RIGHT NOW on Smashwords with coupon code: ZQ49V available from  Feedbooks. It's a short story collection that I believe will appeal to the women's fiction reader who isn't afraid of a little shadow in her light read.

Please, if you've wondered whether or not the 'Thea nut' has any flavor at all, go pick up a copy and read a few stories.

 And if you want to be part of the Thea army of squirrels, please pass this blog post around, share it on Facebook, link to it on your own blogs, Stumble or Reddit, or whatever you do. I'll take anything.

 

Related articles

Agents of the Squirrel Nation (educlaytion.com)
The squirrel army is 4 members strong and growing. (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
A brief survey of the short story part 37: Alice Munro (guardian.co.uk)


Filed under: Thea bits

Do you want to win #ebooks? Help me build my blog

In my bid to build my blog presence I've decided to offer a giveway. One complete Thea ebook package to a random subscriber if I can hit 100 followers. If I can hit 200 by Christmas, (Dec 24, we'll say because I'll be busy on Christmas day.) well, I'll give away a package and a $25 Amazon gift coupon.

Of course, any one in the squirrel army gets entered automatically.

You can choose to accept the gift if you win or you can offer me an alternative person to send the gift to…maybe someone who has a new ereader at Christmas time and would love a bunch of new books and maybe some cash to splurge with.

I'm getting close. Thanks to my squirrel army I've raised my subscribers to 63! Yay! Go army.

I'm happy to reciprocate of course. Anyone in the squirrel army gets my attention and I do my utmost best to RT and mention my squirrels as a priority in my twitter feed. I have 3565 followers at present and a decent klout score (although their tinkering with the algorithms hit me hard recently and I went from 62 to 45. argh. Building it back up though.)

The package will come as coupon codes from Smashwords so you can download into whatever format you require.

There are six ebooks in the package at present:

Anomaly averages 5 stars. I blog about Anomaly a fair bit.
One Insular Tahiti. You can read some posts inspired by the novel
Secret Language of Crows averages 4.5 stars. I blog a bit about this one too.
Formed of Clay averages 5 stars
Throwing Clay Shadows was reviewed on Red Adept Reviews and got 5 stars
Rattling Bones:  a short story collection for chicklit readers has a 5 star rating on Smashwords

How can you help/win this package?

Oh there are so many ways.

Subscribe. That's easy. It's just a quick email type into the box and click submit.
Tweet me. Here's a sample tweet you can copy/paste. (Help @theaatkinson reach 200 blog  followers & win $25 Amazon coupon. #squirrelarmy Details at: http://bit.ly/v04gJu )
Share the post on Facebook by clicking the share button at the end.
Recruit folks using the #squirrelarmy hashtag. I automatically enter you even if you haven't subscribed.

Can you suggest other ways to build a blog presence? Please do share. I'm still learning and I think many of my readers would be interested in hearing tips too.

Related articles

Talking about birds on a wire: a guest post by @jarretrush (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
Squirrel mischief (quefregados.wordpress.com)
Howl is now available on Smashwords! (annalisegrey.wordpress.com)


Filed under: Uncategorized

The squirrel army is 4 members strong and growing.

Last week, I mentioned I was looking for an army of squirrels. (folks who love reading and stockpile their books like nuts in their cozy little dens)

Forget Uncle Sam or Auntie Canuck: I want you.

I need readers, you see. Folks who actually enjoy reading character driven fiction. Do you love zombie books? Yes? I love zombie books too, but that's not what I write. You might truly hate my novels so maybe I shouldn't be trying to recruit you.

But, if you love the likes of Jodi Picoult, Alice Munro, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Urquhart, Joyce Carol Oates, Donna Morrissey, you might, just might enjoy a Thea nut. And if you enjoy a good Thea nut, then I'd love for you to stand with me to take the pledge.

 

Ahem:

I do solemnly swear *squeak*

to share the existence of new nuts when I find out they exist. *squeak squeak*

I swear to spread the news of the Thea nut when I can

To sample a new indie writer

even when the price is 2.99

and even when the price is free

because heaven knows not all free ebooks are trash sometimes the writer is just trying to build an audience

*squeak squeak squeak*

I swear to pull those new nuts into my stockpile of favored reads and treat them the same as the others.

With reverence, with joy, and with pleasure.

*squeak*

So what does this mean? Well, simple really. I'm @theaatkinson on Twitter. I'd love a follow. I'd love a quick message with the hashtag #squirrelarmy so that if I need someone to RT something special I can send a quick request, which you can ignore or not. I don't plan to inundate you with requests, but it'd be nice to know I can count on a few folks to help spread the word. If I have a new blog post, I might stick the hash in and you can choose what to RT or not to RT. Just be your regular timid self darting in and out of your den when it pleases you.

Am I taking the analogy too far?

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Ratling Bones is FREE

Folks: My newest woo nugget is available for free RIGHT NOW on Smashwords and Feedbooks. It's a short story collection that I believe will appeal to the women's fiction reader who isn't afraid of a little shadow in her light read.

Please, if you've wondered whether or not the 'Thea nut' has any flavor at all, go pick up a copy and read a few stories.

 And if you want to be part of the Thea army of squirrels, please pass this blog post around, share it on Facebook, link to it on your own blogs, Stumble or Reddit, or whatever you do. I'll take anything.

 If you liked this post, please do share. If you tweet it with the hashtag #theagimmesome I will enter you into a random draw to win a Thea ebook. I used to offer it weekly, but found there weren't always weekly entrants, so now I do it when I have 10 folks to draw from.

Related articles

Will you join my army of squirrels? (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
Freebie! a collection of short #chicklit fiction with … shadow. (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
A Hungry Little Squirrel (insusansgarden.wordpress.com)

 

Filed under: Thea bits

After Dark

The WithLoveProject is an ongoing charity anthology series that benefits Doctors Without Borders. Organized by Ethics Trading and corporation with The Writing Network, the series published the first edition on March 25th, 2011. Since then, there have been two more anthologies created and published to support the humanitarian mission of Doctors Without Borders.  Currently there are 3 anthologies, with many more coming.

After the first, each anthology has a predetermined theme. With each theme, there is the hope that the hope is the stories submitted will be so good, they can't be easily cut. Another constant desire for the anthologies is that each story will reflect a unique situation, point of view and variety of environment. After Dark contributors did not let us down.

The stories within the pages range from scary to comical, from vivid images that will churn your stomach to entertainment that will have you giggling. There are eight incredibly talented authors with positive giving spirits within the pages of this edition to the WithLoveProject. They poured their hearts onto the page and created such exquisite variety that this is one of the best books I know I've ever read.

Here is a sample from returning contributor Matt Posner's story Sweet Barn Air:

 

We came into a small town in Alabama – I won't say which, so the dead can rest a while longer, but it wasn't quite into Appalachia. In the foothills, coal-mining country – kind of place where a pie was a big event. We put on the show in the usual way. The ostrich was skittish, a bellyache the vet said. Local acts weren't much good — a hound dog that could scoot under a limbo bar on its back, a girl dancing in a tutu who had mosquito bites all over her legs — but the gate was enough for us all to eat and even to feed the tiger a haunch that didn't smell too bad. So a few of us went to a barbecue pit we'd heard about. It was a dark, smoke-filled wood building on a dirt road in the backwoods, and was run by the wives of some sharecroppers. We had ribs and beers and laughs, and we were just easing on our hats and coats to go when a little man came in. Gray coat, crumpled hat, bow-tie. Looked more than half like a weasel. Eyes dark and cold, head nodding in the direction of his gaze.

                "I'm looking," he said quickly, tilting his head a little, "for a man name of Silas Varner."

                "I'm Silas Varner," Varner said. "Buy you a beer?"

A sharecropper's wife fetched the weasel a bottle.

"Name's Sykes," the weasel said when he was through with his beer. "I represent the new star of your circus. You sign this man, you won't be a penny-ante show. Not ever again."

"Star of the show, hey?" Varner said. "Well, tell me more."

"He's a giant," Sykes said. "I reckon he runs thirteen foot tall."

A few of the carnies whistled, the way you do when you hear the winner of a lying contest.

 

To learn more about how you can contribute to the project, either with a story, art or promotion please visit either Ethics Trading or The Writing Network or the Facebook fanpage.

You can find the With Love Charity Anthology Series at all major ebook retailers.

Amazon:

Paranormal Anthology – After Dark, With Love 

Not your typical Romance Anthology – Dawn of Indie Romance, With Love

Chocolate Box Variety Anthology – With Love, by Indie Writers United

Smashwords:

Paranormal Anthology – After Dark, With Love

Not your typical Romance Anthology – Dawn of Indie Romance, With Love

Chocolate Box Variety Anthology – With Love, by Indie Writers United

 

Filed under: guest blogging [image error]

Will you join my army of squirrels?

It's war, people, and I need an army.

You've heard of guerrilla warfare? For us authors, it's called guerrilla marketing, and you can imagine all that entails: Work. Scheming. Work some more.

Well, I've realized that's about what it will take to get my blog seen, read, visited, shared. That's what it's going to take to reach my target audience to even know I exist, let alone buy and read me.

Alas. I'm just not that kinda gal.

Oh, I've tried a few things in my day to woo the would-be reader; I admit it. (Let's call them little squirrels who are all nice and cozy in their fur-lined dens, snuggled against a stockpile of favored nuts to chew on when they get peckish. They have no need to poke their noses out into the cold to sniff for other, new and as yet unsavored seeds. No. Would should they? I know I wouldn't.)

I've done what I can to woo the little critters. I've built my brand with posts that are relevant to the type of writing I do. I've offered samples. I've given books away in contests wherever I had a chance, I've sought out reviews, gotten impromptu reviews, I've chatted on twitter and Facebook, and Goodreads. I've passed out coupons and freebies and guested on other blogs. I've answered interview questions, posted on forums, and given other writers opportunities to guest on mine, paid it forward, paid it back, and paid it sideways.

Sigh.

I'm not good at marketing. I write. I'm a writer. It took me years to let myself wear that label and I'll be durned if I paste another one onto it. I figure if I can continue to craft my tales with care, study to hone my craft, keep learning and applying, eventually someone will find me.

Nope. Not at all. The squirrels have no reason to trade out those nuts.

So I need an army.

But I won't recruit one like John Locke seems to have been able to do. (Way to go, John!)

I, like so many authors I know, will merely quietly harbour delusions of a horde of timid squirrels rising up from their pile of fragrant seeds and nuts and realize they want something new. I see an army of them overrunning the 'jungle' (hitherto known as the Amazon) and swarming over the small, but delicate flavor of the Thea nut–to find it very tasty indeed.

Here little squirrel. Come see what I have for you. Won't you join my army?

-30-

 

Ratling Bones is FREE

Folks: My newest woo nugget is available for free on Smashwords and Feedbooks. It's a short story collection that I believe will appeal to the women's fiction reader who isn't afraid of a little shadow in her light read.

Please, if you've wondered whether or not the 'Thea nut' has any flavor at all, go pick up a copy and read a few stories.

 And if you want to be part of the Thea army of squirrels, please pass this blog post around, share it on Facebook, link to it on your own blogs, Stumble or Reddit, or whatever you do. I'll take anything.

 If you liked this post, please do share. If you tweet it with the hashtag #theagimmesome I will enter you into a random draw to win a Thea ebook.

 Related Reads:

Buzz Marketing with Blogs
Finding your Target audience
The Other Side of the Story

 Related articles

Story feedback at Feedbooks and Smashwords (marklord.info)
Rock n Roll Writer advice: Never Release a book in summer @westofmars (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
Talking about birds on a wire: a guest post by @jarretrush (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)


Filed under: Thea bits

Do you believe in Fairies?

I believe in fairies ~ just don't ask me to define what a fairy actually is!

by Vivienne Tuffnell

Buy now on Amazon.com

Most children stop believing in fairies somewhere in their tweens, if not beforehand. It's a charming belief like Father Christmas that adults usually encourage them to hang on to but are never surprised when they finally declare in that argument-defying tone, "There's no such thing!"

I suspect I was no different, though my personal belief in Father Christmas persisted a little longer due to an incident involving bells, the interconnecting chimney system in the Victorian house I grew up in and my father's attempt to wrap an impossibly shaped toy. I've long been involved in the supernatural; a diocesan exorcist or two have been among my close personal friends and I've experienced many things that would make the researchers of Britain's Most Haunted lick their lips in glee.

But fairies? Come on, now, flower fairies with gossamer wings? Tinkerbell?

I returned to a belief in fairies some time in 1997, when we lived in an isolated rectory at the edge of the Norfolk fens. Items of small worth but immediate need kept going missing and reappearing in improbable places, often where several of us had looked numerous times before. Glasses, jewellery, keys, precious little things all vanished into thin air. My husband or my daughter or I would storm around the house hunting for the missing item, getting more and more stressed about it.

Having coffee with a friend and neighbour Sam, I mentioned this and she let out a full throated chuckle of a laugh.

"It's the fairies," she said and I spilled my coffee and spluttered with disbelief.

To my shock she detailed the things that happened, the kind of things that went missing and where they tended to turn up. Half convinced, I asked what I could do about it.

"Not a lot, really," she said. "I find leaving them sugar and the occasional glass of something sweet and alcoholic helps. They tend to return things quicker if you ask politely. And sometimes they give you things."

After this I tuned up my inner vision and I did start to sense presences, around me. Most of them were in the garden which we'd cultivated as a traditional cottage garden filled with old fashioned scented plants, but some liked the house. They liked my collection of stones, polished gemstones and crystals; these were my most commonly borrowed items. They liked my house plants and the small grove of large leaved plants that I had in the larger of the reception rooms.

So, still a little sceptical, I tried working with them, and to my surprise I found that the garden grew better and the house felt happier. Things still moved around but I didn't worry too much. Even when car keys vanished when I needed them, I tried to stay polite and eventually they were returned.

Of course, the big question is what ARE fairies? There are a number of

possible options. They may be nature spirits, of the type termed devas, which work with the natural world to keep things going smoothly. In some theologies, they are the spawn of fallen angels and are to be mistrusted and shunned; these are the kind that stole children and replaced them with changelings. They may be disembodied spirits, those of the dead or those not yet born. Or one theory is that in antiquity they were a pygmy race of humans driven to the margins and subsisting by stealing from us. This last theory is somewhat borne out by the discovery some years back of a miniature race of humans on the island of Flores; nicknamed the Hobbit, these tiny folks, now extinct, would have lived at the same time as modern humans.

And of course, for some, they may just be a figment of the imagination, the product of a deranged mind, a sustained hallucination. We use the term "away with the fairies" to denote someone has lost touch with ordinary reality and is on a trip of some sort. It's a kinder way of saying someone is a bit mad. It's also the title of my most recent book.

"Away with the Fairies" is the tale of artist Isobel, trying to carve out time and space from busy family life to pursue her career as a painter. Isobel has endured tragedy and hardship but has brushed all these under the carpet in the need to get on with everyday life. But none of these things have really gone away, and her life unravels spectacularly when she hits a deer driving home. Sequestered at their isolated holiday cottage, Isobel notices odd things happening, small things appearing and disappearing and doors and windows refusing to stay shut. Dismissing it as nothing at first, she becomes immersed more and more deeply in the cycle of visionary paintings she has begun until the strange events become impossible to ignore. That's when she gets scared…..

My own experiences always tend to influence my books, so finding fairies in a story wasn't that great a surprise, though the conclusion I come to in the book was a bit of a shock to me. That is one of the great joys in writing, that finding of secrets you didn't know you knew.

"Away With The Fairies" is available as an e-book from Amazon USA :

From Amazon UK:

And currently as a paperback from Lulu, (though in a few weeks time it will also be available from Amazon)

It is also available at Amazon France, and Amazon Germany but I haven't put up the links from those places as I can't imagine it selling in either country.

Isobel's a sceptic, as I suspect most people are, but she learns that there are far more things in the world that she never imagined could exist…….

Filed under: guest blogging [image error]

Branding is important, but how do you do it?

Branding. What is it? How do we do it?

Thea Atkinson

We read the term all the time; we even get the advice and much much explanation from blogs like Kristen Lamb's. Her book, We Are Not Alone goes into much detail about branding and marketing as an author. There are other blogs and sites that discuss branding at length. And there are a ton of books too. John Locke's book (yes, I succumbed to the hype and bought it) details his journey on branding and suggests to authors how they can use his method to build an audience.

All great advice.

But really. How do you actually DO it?

I'm not sure how you can, but I can tell you how I'm going about it. It's my own style of soft sell marketing mixed with information from both Kristen Lamb's and Johne Locke's books. It's all good information, but I needed to find a way to make my brand in a way that suited me and that I could manage.

And I hope perhaps with a little explanation of what I'm doing, you might find a comfort zone with this whole concept for yourself.

At first, I struggled with the notion of my brand. I did the keywords thing like Kristen suggested. (Want to know more, just snap up her book, it's a great read and very helpful) The trouble was, I had a hard time describing myself with tags and keywords. If you check my Amazon tags, you'll see just how much I struggle. For a writer, I'm woefully inept at summarizing, but I digress.

After many frustrating weeks of trying to find my own comfort zone with tags and keywords and branding and trying to be helpful to others, (which I do anyways) I picked up John Locke's book How I Sold a Million Ebooks. I read it. I tried his method–or at least I gave it the old  Thea shot, which means I did as much as I was comfortable with. I don't have a newsletter and tons of fans to help spread my word, nor do I feel comfortable asking people to do it for me. But I did discover I was already doing some of the things he suggested.

So.

I mixed the two self-help books into one Thea concept to find out what the Thea brand is. The information from both of these as well as a few weeks of reflection told me I was already doing what I should to build my brand. I just needed to fine tune and focus.

You see, I write character driven fiction (a keyword combination that I found thanks to Kristen's book). This means that what drives my own writing motor is the same things that drive my characters. I want to know how they will act/react/ and grow/evolve from a plot. So I started thinking:

What are all those events in my life's journey that propel(led) me to the page in the first place? My brother's addiction, the suicide of a friend, the heart attack my mom suffered, the death of my favorite pet. All those things and more send me to the written page and infect the things I write there.

That's what drives me.

And I bet those things will interest a reader who is interested in character driven fiction. And so if I blog about those, my target audience will appreciate it.

Will those posts interest a pulp fiction, vampire loving, shapeshifting time traveller reader?

No.

And that's ok, because a pulp fiction, vampire loving, shapeshifting time traveller reader probably won't like my books anyway (unless they happen to love those genres but also REALLY care about how the characters will evolve/grow etc. THEN they just might like my stuff)

So I blog about those things and I ask people to read them and share if they like it. Recently, I've been asking folks who share my posts through Twitter to add a hashtag of #theagimmesome and then each Monday, I draw a name at random and email that person a coupon for a free ebook from Smashwords.

All little things that build the Thea Atkinson brand, the brand of a writer who enjoys the journey and struggles of life whether fictional or real life and blends them.

That's my brand.

What's yours?

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If you liked this post, please do share. If you tweet it with the hashtag #theagimmesome I will enter you into a weekly random draw to win a Thea ebook.

Plus grab a free short story: God in the Machine from Smashwords just for visiting.

Filed under: writerwednesday exercises

In which I explain a few things about Anomaly

Buy from Amazon

Poor Anomaly.

It's not a great seller. It tries to make its creator happy and slip in a few sales each month, almost as if to say, "Hey Ma! Look at me. See, I can be good." But really, they are only enough to get me thrilled and happy for a few moments, kind of like a little reminder that my favorite child was born with a few sadly genetic defects that I passed on and now it's doing its best to have a happy life.

I gave it so many handicaps, this child of mine. It has a bad blurb. It has a homemade cover. It doesn't fit nicely into any real niche that I can promote it in or that readers can say, "Yes! I love that type of book."

And it has a transgender character.

OK. That's probably the deal breaker. I'm sure some readers aren't interested in reading what they think is a gay novel (to put it bluntly). I've had other writers tell me that's a great promotion opportunity. A ready made marketing audience: LGBT. I resist that. Not because I'm afraid of being labelled a writer of gay and queer novels, but because Anomaly just isn't that.

It has a transgender character.

That's it. It's not a novel about transgenderism–although, admittedly, that's the device used to propel the character. So I don't feel comfortable writing to a queer audience and trying to pass off my character driven novel as a LGBT genre. They would throw stones at me. Rightly so. I did my best to honor the issues and honor the humanity of the LGBT community, to make J's journey authentic, but it isn't a novel written for that market.

Neither is it just pure plot driven story. I write character driven fiction, So the novel is about the character. It's about J. A person. A human being who wants something. J has flaws. J has needs. What J needs most is to find peace within.

Don't we all want that?

I think Anomaly speaks to many issues that we live in, that our psyches process and purge a hundred times a week: the need to be loved, to be accepted, to find happiness. J is his own worst enemy, like many of us are.

Can we find love? Can we find happiness?

Above all, can we find that place within that says, "Yes, I'm going to be OK. I want to be OK."

So every month, I have a few sales of this book that I believe is my best work so far. Robert Duperre gave it 4.7/5 stars. Big Al gave it 5 stars. These are discerning readers and honest reviewers, so I think my little handicapped child is doing OK. Its psyche, its parts, its soul, its very completeness of being is just fine, thankyou. No need for me to worry.

This little child of mine is tenacious. It's time I told it I'm proud of it.

And I am.

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If you liked this post, please do share. If you tweet it with the hashtag #theagimmesome I will enter you into a weekly random draw to win a Thea ebook.

Anomaly is available from BN, Smashwords, and Kobo as well as Amazon.

Plus grab a free short story collection:Rattling Bones from Smashwords just for visiting.

Related Posts you might find interesting:

TransGroup Blog: Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Don't be Trans
Kristen Lamb Blog: Choosing Our Path: Genre Matters
All Write Fiction Advice: Plot vs Character driven stories



Filed under: Thea bits

Do you drool when you read?

Drool worthy fiction

I've been reading the A Song of Ice and Fire (otherwise known as The Game of Thrones) series a lot lately, and while it is nothing like Harry Potter, they do have something in common that I enjoyed in both series: food.

Like many people, I have an understanding of addiction, not from the user perspective, but from the family perspective, so I know that while I'm not addicted to food, I do love to eat. It could easily be an addiction but for the fact that this one real vice that I have flogs me very quickly when I indulge. I put on weight like nobody's business.

But I love food and I love to read about food. So when an author can make me drool over the dish descriptions as much as the plot, I'm sold. I find myself continually hungry when I read George RR Martin's series. Strange, that for as much as I love to read a book that includes that piece of the puzzle, I've never really made dishes and entrée's part of writing.

I defend myself that those series Martin and Rowling created were all about transporting a reader to another world. You can't build a world without food I tell myself and you, Thea, are writing about character evolution. Yet some great series writers never mentioned food to any extent. I think of Tolkein. Do you remember any food in the LOTR trilogy? I don't. there may be some in there, but i don't remember it. So, alas, my defence falls flat.

I'd like to think I'll give grave consideration to extolling the virtues of foodstuff in my next novel, maybe even in the series I'm writing that stretches from pre-culture Earth to apocalyptic Earth. Surely food will be important in building that world. Yes. I'll make the note to try to weave in things like venison roasted with wild onions and honey, with mashed strawberries over flame charred griddle cakes, with pitted olives bobbing in a sea of pear wine, with wild hare stuffed with herbed butter and acorn mash.

Good heavens. I can do it: that all sounds perfectly delicious, doesn't it? I should be able to write those things into my narrative. I have the skill.

But I won't. I know I won't. I might put a thing like pitted olives into the narrative but I won't spend sentences describing it, making it real, making the reader's mouth water because I've been taught to make the writing of details invisible, to have them blend in with the character's wants and desires and … character. So I won't give up the valuable word space real estate to food.

I'll want to, but I won't.

I'm too impatient to get the story done, maybe. Perhaps I'm just not good enough. It might even be because I just won't think to do it. Most probably, it'll be because I'd end up getting up from my desk and making myself a snack.

I do love to eat, you see, and writing those descriptions has made me hungry.

I just can't afford to put on much more weight after reading Martin.

-30-

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