Arshad Ahsanuddin's Blog, page 28

On Memory

Have you ever woken from a sound sleep with a fully-formed novel in your head, complete with dialogue and visuals, which evaporated as soon as you sat down to write it? It happens to all of us, and you sit at your computer, or with pencil and paper, and try impotently to recapture perfection. Writers [...]

Thank you!

If I were to list the people who most contributed to making this effort possible, the final thanks would go to my readers. Some were relatively silent, others were more vocal in their comments, and then there was Jerry. What can I say about Jerry? The first of my online fans who wrote to me [...]

Welcome to my blog

And so we begin again. Long live my new revamped website. Thanks to Monkey C Media for all their hard work! For those who are joining me for the first time, welcome to the party. I will try to be a gracious host. This has been a long and educational journey, beginning in October 2009, [...]

A Modest Proposal

Hopefully, I will have something to say that you find worthy. If you have comments on the books, or if you have questions you would like me to answer, please feel free to submit them through the Comments function. Feeling creative? In my experience, there are always certain individuals who really enjoy an entertaining work [...]

A Note on Story Structure

They say to always start with action, and in media res, i.e. to begin in the middle. That way, you engage the reader's attention, while tantalizing with hints of the backstory of how the main characters reached this point. I debated with myself many times as to where to begin the story. My first editor [...]

Illustration Evolution

So the third draft of the text was at the editor's, and I was playing around with clip art in Photoshop to try and create heraldic symbols that would convey a sense of the character and importance of the various factions that were fighting it out in the book. I actually completed basic versions of [...]