David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 58

T is for Trailers

 

There are times when writing full time gets tedious, and I turn to other things. In amongst the online jigsaws and sudokus, I find time to potter with Photoshop and Windows MovieMaker.

MovieMaker Live was brilliant. Then some dick at Microsoft decided to tinker with it, changed it all out of recognition and it crashes every two minutes, so I reverted to an earlier version. I can’t do as much with it as I could MM Live, but it’s adequate for turning out book trailers.

The trailers are not Oscar material. They’re essentially a string of photographs, each with a caption or tagline, which adds to the intrigue of the titles they cover.

And just to show you what I mean, here are three trailers for Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries.

First: The Filey Connection.

 

And next up is A Murder for Christmas.

 

Finally A Halloween Homicide.

 

Each trailer takes about two days to prepare. Installing the pictures is the easy bit. Writing the captions and then marrying them to the music is the tricky part of the equation. Finally I deal with the transitions, and MM offers a whole range of them… not as many as I’d like, but what the hell. You can’t everything for free.

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

S is for Sheila Riley

 

Like her best friend Brenda, Sheila is 55 years old and widowed. Her husband, Peter, a police inspector succumbed to a double heart attack about five or six years back.

Sheila has spent most of her life working as a school secretary, but after her husband’s death, her enthusiasm for the academic halls waned and she took early retirement. Soon after, she joined Joe and Brenda at the Lazy Luncheonette. Where she takes over on the counter at those times when Joe is busy elsewhere.

Sheila is more serious and sober than Brenda. She has not need of relationships, but she enjoys socialising with the Sanford 3rd Age Club, for whom she acts as secretary.

Better educated than Joe or Brenda, with an inside knowledge of police procedures, she often acts as an advisor to Joe on investigations, and also reins him in on his wilder flights of fancy. She is the more motherly and supportive of the three, less given to the emotional outbursts of her friends, and a shoulder for Brenda to cry on.

A demure, discreet lady whose life revolves around the Sanford 3rd Age Club, her family, and many years of happy marriage, she can also be a snapper. She is not one to be crossed lightly.

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

R is for Readings

 

A couple of years back I was working with a friend, Greg McQueen, on the possibility of turning Voices into an audio book. I did some readings using a crap microphone and Greg told me I had a strong enough voice to do the lot. I invested a coupla hundred notes in equipment and I did it. Took me three bloody weeks but I did it.

That project never got off the ground, but I still use that equipment occasionally for readings and short audioblogs.

One of the problems I always felt was my Yorkshire accent. It’s not strong but it is noticeable. When, however, it came to The Filey Connection, it was a positive asset.

(I’ve always wondered, what is a negative asset?)

You can judge for yourself by listening to two readings from the book, embedded below.

Here’s the first.

 

Podcast Powered By Podbean

And if you enjoyed that, here’s the second.

 

Podcast Powered By Podbean

 

Reading aloud has some advantages for the writer, too. It lets him hear how the prose sounds, rather than simply reading it. He gets to judge the flow of words, spots repetitions that he may have missed when reading.

Audio is fun to fool around with, and it gives the writer a break from the constant tap of the keyboard, and if it improves the finished product, then much the better for the reader, too.

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

Spam

Acting on advice, I disabled the captcha code when I set out on the A-Z challenge. The level of spam getting past the filter has now reached intolerable levels, so I’m sorry, but the captcha code is back on.

Most bots won’t get past the code, and as for the real people, well they’re inherently lazy (or they wouldn’t be spamming in the first place) and most of them won’t bother with the captcha code. Those that do, take note, will be booted out before their comments can appear.

My apologies to the genuine commenters. I don’t like inconveniencing you to this degree, but I have more to do than chase after idle, mindless idiots, all of whom would be better off if they went out and got a job.

Q is also for Quick Peek

Voices by David Shaw is due out on May 10th. For those who don’t know, David Shaw is me, and Voices is a product of my alarming imagination.

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The novel concerns Chris Deacon, a man who survives a terrorist bomb attack only to find himself haunted by bizarre phantoms, disturbing visions and Voices in his head.

Voices could not be further removed from the gentle and easy flow of The Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries. This is a psychological thriller steeped in the paranormal, with a strong sci-fi element. This is a man robbed of his hearing, robbed of the power to speak, tortured by the Voices until he is compelled to follow a thin trail to their “lair” a remote house, hidden deep in the Northumbrian forests. And it is there that he will confront the horrifying truth.

To give you a taster, here is a short scene from somewhere around the halfway mark. Desperate to regain control of his life, Chris has established two-way contact with the Voices, and he has asked them why him. The Voices agree to “show” him, and immediately, a black hole opens and swallows him.

***

It was like being inside a tunnel. I had no conception of time. It could have taken a few seconds, it could have taken an hour, even a day, and I would not know the difference.

The tunnel was not entirely dark. All around me were flashes of light and I got the impression that there was some substance to them; as if I were looking through windows with reality on the other side of them. It reminded me of sitting on a train at night, when it passes another coming in the opposite direction. Every window of the second train flies past in a millisecond, and although you know that each window shows a view of the second train’s interior, it happens too fast to make sense of it.

The tunnel was like that, but instead of a continuous stream of windows, the flashes were intermittent and came at irregular intervals, moving laterally, appearing ahead of me, passing by, disappearing behind me in a nanosecond, giving the impression of unimaginable speed.

Between the flashes there was nothing; only a mind-numbing blackness darker than the darkest night. A darkness so complete that it was all-encompassing. A black that was blacker than my swim after The Refectory. A darkness so dark that, were it not for the sheer astonishment of the experience, it would have generated hallucinations.

For all the imagined speed, there were none of the sensations usually associated with forward motion. Somewhere under my apprehension was the knowledge that I should be able to feel the wind rushing into my face so fast that I would be unable to breathe. There should have been the dizzying feeling of a fall, like the stomach churning motion of a roller coaster. There should perhaps have been the familiar rocking motion of a train, maybe even the clickety-click of wheels on rails. But there was none of that. It was as if I was stood still and the tunnel passed me on all sides.

I detected the faintest of light up ahead, a mile, a million miles distant. The tiny pinhole suddenly rushed towards me and burst outwards in all directions at once. I could make out street lighting. I was hurtling towards it at an unstoppable rate.

A memory of the Chatter’s head flying at me, leapt into my mind. That had hurt. This would be worse. I braced myself, throwing up my arm to absorb the impact.

It never came. Instead, the sensation of movement ended. There was no braking, no slowing down, not even the sudden stop packed with sufficient kinetic energy to smash through the earth below. I just stopped.

***

What is awaiting Chris on the other end of the warp? You’ll have to wait and see.

Voices by David Shaw, is published by Crooked Cat Books on May 10th 2012

Voices … You can’t escape what is in your head.

Q is for Questions

 

Detectives, whether police, private, professional or amateur, ask questions.

There are times when Joe frustrates the police officers he’s supposed to be helping by asking apparently meaningless questions. For instance, in The I-spy Murders (next in the series, due out, June 28th) he asks Katy Flitt how her mother is. I’m not doing to tell you why. You’ll have to read it to learn that. He’s the same in A Murder for Christmas, when he asks whether Jennifer is left handed (again, if you wanna know why, read the book).

While nothing is spelled out, it indicates to the reader that Joe is formulating a theory. Or at least I hope it does.

Joe is not the only one who needs to ask questions. As a writer, I do too. Before I even start a tale, I need to know what has been done, who did it and why. The other basic questions, where, when and how, I can answer as I go along, but without that initial knowledge, I have no story.

And yet, it doesn’t end there. Very often, as I go along, the tale takes over, developing a life of its own, and while the what rarely changes, the who and the why can.

Over and above that, when I have the first draft complete, I still have to question everything on the rewrites. What is the purpose of this scene, why is that character doing what he’s doing, if condition A applies, how can situation B work?

Like Joe trying to solve a crime, it’s a constant process of asking questions until everything slots neatly into place. And at that point, I ask myself another question. “Is it finished?” You’ve no idea how big a relief it is when I can answer, “yes.”

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

P is for Publishing

 

I self-published the early Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries. The first two were way too short of what a publisher would require anyway. I had been traditionally published prior to the Kindle and it wasn’t always a happy experience.

I published my first two novels in 2002, and within a month or so of returning the second contract, the publisher went bust. I managed to place them with another publisher and he went bust before he could even put them out. Those two books are lost to posterity.

I sold my next novel in 2007 to an American POD (print on demand) outfit, Virtual Tales, and it stayed with them for three years before they, too, went into liquidation.

Obviously, I’m the kiss of death to publishers, and by now, Laurence and Steph Patterson, who run Crooked Cat Publishing, must be getting on something of a sweat, but things have changed since Virtual Tales first set up. The Kindle has taken off, and it’s being followed by other e-readers. All of a sudden, ebooks are the way forward.

The Kindle and its ilk opened the door for every man and his dog to become a publisher. It also opened the door for some of the most unadulterated rubbish ever to call itself a book. I do not include my work in that category, although it’s true to say, I always have doubts about my novels.

This influx of dross led to a situation where all self-publishers became tarred with the same brush: cheap, tacky, rubbish, not worthy of a proper publisher. And it’s nonsense. There are thousands of self-publishers out there producing excellent novels, and the truth is it’s the readers (or those who shoot off their mouths) who do not understand the publishing game.

It’s quite arbitrary. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time with the right product. Do you know how many agents/publishers turned down J.K. Rowling before she landed a deal? Why was she rejected? Because the agent/publisher in question saw no potential in her work.

So many people believe that publishers are in business to publish books. Wrong. They are in business to make money. They do that by publishing books. If they cannot see a market, a potential profit, then they will say, ‘no thanks.’ Hence, so many authors have turned to doing the job themselves.

So after self-publishing a range of titles, why did I decide to sign up with Crooked Cat?

I’m a writer, not a publisher. Even with Smashwords and the Kindle, putting the book online takes the better part of a full day. I have to set up different files for the different organisations, then I have to upload them, put out the blurb, set up the pricing. It’s a pain in the arse. Working with Crooked Cat, I may well be taking a cut in profits, but they take all that off me, freeing up valuable writing time.

There’s another angle, too. Visibility. At the moment Crooked Cat is the new kid on the block, but as their lists grow, as word spreads, so more and more people will visit the site, and that will do more to lift my visibility (and that of the other Crooked Cat authors) than any amount of tweeting.

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

K is also for Kick Start

 

What do you do when you've written and published your novel? Simple. You start the next one.

Well that's the position I'm in right now because yesterday, I signed the contract for The I-Spy Murders, the next Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, and I'm kick-starting it right here and now.

One of the things I love about e- and POD publishing is the speed of turnaround. If I'd signed the contract with one of the biggies, I could look forward to publication sometime in the summer of 2013. Modern, small, independent houses, like Crooked Cat work much faster and The I-Spy Murders will be with you on June 28th this year.

That date is significant for me. June 28th is my daughter's birthday, and Mrs Angela Brown will be … cough cough … years old. It was also my late stepfather's birthday, and if he were still with us he would have been (I think) 83 years of age.

So now I've given you the background, what is The I-Spy Murders all about?

I-Spy is a reality TV programme, not unlike Big Brother, except that it runs for only one week and there are no evictions. Brenda, of Lazy Luncheonette fame, is one of the Housies. The show runs its course with the usual ups and downs, and The Sanford 3rd Age Club have arranged for a weekend in Chester to greet Brenda as she comes out of the I-Spy House.

Before that can happen, however, one of the Housies is found hanging in the only room of the house where there are no cameras. Since the Housies are under the watchful eye of the cameras 24/7 and no one from the outside can get at them, it's obviously suicide.

Not so, declares Joe. He knows it is murder. But he has many peculiarities to explain before he can convince DCI Frank Hoad.  None of the remaining seven Housies left their beds. No one was seen entering the Private Room after the victim. No one from the outside could get there without being seen, and no one from the outside world could even get into the grounds, never mind the hall without being detected by the cameras.

If it is murder, then it's an impossible murder.

Can Joe, Sheila and Brenda explain the impossible?

***

The I-Spy Murders, the follow up to The Filey Connection, is published by Crooked Cat on June 28th 2012.

K is for Killing

 

Over the last 25-30 years I've bumped off hundreds of people. Fortunately, it's all on paper. I've been anti-war, anti-violence all my life, and I will never alter that stance. There is never any justification for violence. Never.

On the other hand, it isn't half good for business.

Murder is a premeditated act, but there are, of course, different kinds of murder. The Handshaker, for example, commits murder partly for sexual gratification, partly to prevent his victims ever telling anyone of the abuse they have suffered at his hands. The Voices end the lives of a number of people, and they do so to demonstrate their power.

When it comes to the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, however, matters are slightly different. The murders are always carefully planned, but quite often, they're not planned as murders. Something happens when the plan materialises to turn it from whatever they had in mind to murder. On the other hand, there are also those times when the killing was pre-planned as such and carried out to perfection. In either case, the motives are usually quite simple: sex, financial gain or revenge for some perceived injustice.

Where the deaths in the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries differ from, say, The Handshaker, is in the narration. In a major work I may go into graphic detail: in the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, I do not. They're cosy crimes and readers of such books are interested more in the denouement, how the sleuth unmasks the murderer, not in the blood and gore of the actual killing.

Even Joe, never squeamish, often says, "I'm not a ghoul."

***

The Filey Connection, first of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, from Crooked {Cat} Books is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords

The Handshaker is exclusive to Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide

J is for Just Released

Today sees the official launch of Trace Your Roots by my very good friend, editor, mentor and tormentor, Maureen Vincent-Northam.

There's an old saying that before you know where you're going, you have to know where you came from, and this volume gives you the basic tools to begin that research. And Mo knows what she's talking about. Research, genealogy is her specialist area.

But don't listen to me. Take a look at this trailer for the book.

Tempted? You should be. At last you can work out whether you're distantly related to some of the world's wealthiest.

There's a live event going on for most of the day on Facebook, and you're more then welcome to gatecrash. If anybody asks, tell them Laurie Clayton said it was okay

Trace Your Roots is available in paperback format from Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide, and you can learn more from Maureen's website.