Jess Mountifield's Blog, page 50

The Legendiers And The Battle Of Darkness: A Review

The Legendiers And The Battle Of Darkness by Jeremy Johnson is my first book being reviewed from The List of best indie author books being created on Amazon. The legendiers synopsis from Amazon Omri Vale's parents recently died and he believes it was his fault. Now he is an orphan and placed in foster care. [...]

Forming Ideas

Often people ask how to form ideas and where inspiration comes from. I thought I'd share where mine comes from and how I form that first spark into a fully fledged plot idea. The spark Most of my ideas are stimulated by something that has happened in my life; a conversation, something I've watched, something [...]

Social Network: A Review

Social Network is a movie about Facebook and it's founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and the Napster co-founder Sean Parker. The film is mostly fictional but it follows the creation of facebook, as well as the two law suits levied at Zuckerberg, from Eduardo for cutting his shares, and the Winklevoss twins for stealing their [...]

Best Fiction Books From Indie Authors: Interview with Patrick

While I've been browsing my way through the secret hidden forums of the kindle publishers/authors world I've met quite a number of authors and a few have stuck out to me. I'd like to introduce you to Patrick, just one of those authors, who is working to create a list on Amazon.com and .co.uk populated [...]

An Echo In The Darkness: A Review

An Echo In The Darkness is the second book in the Mark Of The Lion trilogy by Francine Rivers. This book continues to explore the characters in the first book, picking up where the previous book left off, almost to the exact second. There are a few more characters introduced but mostly it follows all [...]

Indie Authors First Book Project

Inspired by Joe Konrath's blog a week ago where he pledged $500 to the charity First Book if his book made it to the top 100 of Amazon.com's listing, a group of Authors have all come together to do the same thing. All books involved are being kept track of here and I'm expecting mine [...]

An Artist's Call

I was listening to the soundtrack for the second Narnia film recently and hit the credit song, The Call by Regina Spektor and found the words inspired me to write some poetry. I thought I'd share what came out of it.   An artists call A gentle whisper close to my ear, Lets me know [...]

Naming Characters

One of the hardest things about writing a new novel, script or other written piece is finding the right character name.

Character names have to sound just right and often people can spend hours agonising over the right sound, ease of spelling and all sorts of other factors.

I try and name my characters in one of three ways.

Name after someone I know.
Find a name meaning that matches the character's personality.
Search for popular names in that period/region.

Naming after someone I know

This can help with the more minor chracters but I wouldn't recommend it with your major chracters. It's a trick I've used on a few occasions and will probably use again. I know the author Joe Konrath also does this occasionally as part of contests where the winner gets a minor character (Occasionally a major chracter) named after them.

The name still has to fit in your setting however. Bob isn't going to work if it's 1810 and likewise Fitzwilliam doesn't work so well as a first name in a book set now. I named James Long in With Proud Humility after one of my relatives that was in the Caribbean at the same time I'd set my book.

Finding a name meaning

This is my favourite way of naming the main characters of my books, especially my main females. Usually I will get a good feel for how I wish my chracter to act and who they are before I even attempt naming them this way. Sometimes I just use their position within society or something similar.

This can be quite time consuming but I've found searching for a baby name site on google speads up the process somewhat. Sadly the baby name site I normally use has just installed some really annoying video ads that restart each time you click to a new page on their website so I won't recommend them to you. There are lots of them though and most of them easy to search by meaning.

I've named Kaihaitu in this fashion by looking up what names had the meaning leader in Maori, as well as Tanwen which means white fire.

Popular names

Looking up names in a particular time can be very useful for historical fiction or books set in other countries. This is probably how I name the majority of my characters. For example the new book I'm writing has a large chunk of the chracters being from the same Maori tribe. It makes sense for me to look up common names originally used within the Maori culture. Then all I have to do is go through the lists and pick ones I like the sound of. Kinda like naming babies really.

If you've tried all that and you're still stuck for a name try asking another writer to help. You will be surprised how many names get tucked away in the recesses of memories when you look up so many names all the time.

The plan: April 2011

Last month's progress:

Last month I tried to do a trial run at NaNoWriMo. To write 50k words of my new novel in one month. I didn't quite manage it. I did manage just over 40k words, however, and I'm now well over half way through the next book's first draft. So I do consider it a success.

I hand-wrote: 41k words
Typed: 65k words (including emails and blogs)
Spent 10 hours planning for the old book.
5 hours on Flight work
Spent approx 15 hours in the month distracted by something (not including emails).
Sent 103 emails
Spent 25 hours reading

I think I need to be distracted less but still good progress, and maybe send a few less emails.

This month the plan is to get my book cover done for With Proud Humility, finish off the last of the t-shirt designs for the new website/shop and work on the graphic novels with Kezia Warren and Andrew Bellingham. I'm also going to need to dedicate some time to a top secret project for Flight. Will post more about that when I can.

I'm taking ten days off from easter, so assuming I still have some time left, I'll then continue writing the second book (and maybe finally name it too).

Jessie, by Joshua Kadison: A Distraction

I was trying to work hard the other day when my husband, Phil, mentioned to me that he had been listening to a song called Jessie by Mother Earth. It suddenly made me think of a song my mother used to play when I was younger, also called Jessie, by Joshua Kadison.

Here's the youtube link: Jessie on Youtube

The chorus lyrics are:

Jessie paint your pictures 'bout how it's gonna be.

By now I should know better, your dreams are never free.

But tell me all about our little trailer by the sea;

Jessie you can always sell any dream to me.

Oh, Jessie, you can always sell any dream to me.

I know it's not an entirely postive song about this girlie, Jessie, but it is about someone that dreams big and is willing to give it a go making those dreams happen. It just struck me that people often refer to me as a dreamer, someone not afraid to take a risk to see a dream come true either. The songs rather apt, as well as me sharing the name and it made me stop and think for a bit.

Anyone else have songs they listen to and it reminds them of themselves (not just because of the name of the person being sung about)?