Tony Richards's Blog: 21st Century Holmes, page 3

SOME ADVICE ON WRITING FICTION

The following is an extract from my short book How to Improve Your Writing: The Art of Creating Professional Fiction, available in Kindle and all other eBook formats.


TRUST YOUR INNER VOICE
I honestly believe that, when you start out on a piece of fiction, you might not understand exactly where it’s going. But your subconscious does.In his novel The End of the Affair – told from the first-person viewpoint of fictitious novelist Maurice Bendrix – Graham Greene discusses this in detail. And he most importantly tells us the following: When not writing, we might be busy with other things – going to the supermarket, recording our business expenses, chatting with our chums – but “the stream” of the unconscious goes on flowing regardless of all that, studying the problems in our story and pre-planning. That is perfectly true, and I believe that I can prove it.You spend most of the afternoon working on a new novel. Finally, you reach the end of the chapter you’ve been busy with and decide to call it a day. Your partner comes home and you talk about the day’s events. You watch the Simpsonsand the TV news. You read the evening paper. Then there’s dinner, washing up. And then, when it’s round ten o’clock and you’re preoccupied with something else, the book that you were working on a few hours back suddenly pops into your head again. You abruptly realize that you’ve got some detail wrong, or ought to add more detail, or the whole plot would work better if you changed this thread to that. It might not even be the chapter you were working on that afternoon. It could be a scene you wrote last week, or one you haven’t even written yet but suddenly have definite ideas about.But the real point is this. You weren’t consciously thinking about your book at all – you had completely different matters on your mind. The notion that just struck you came, apparently, from nowhere. Except that cannot be true.The only explanation has to be that your subconscious mind continued working on your book the whole while you were doing all those other things. So it already knows your story and where it is headed. Quietly and secretively, it has more than likely figured the whole plotline out. Getting all of that unconscious gunk out of the latter regions of your mind and up into your conscious brain, where you can think about it, work on it and re-work it – that is the true job of a writer. Greene was of the opinion that we “remember the details” of a piece of fiction, rather than inventing them. So that on one level, a part of the task before us is already done.But those sudden flashes of revelation are not simply your subconscious helping you. They’re your subconscious yelling at you – “Put this right, you dope!” And it’s important that you take immediate notice; mental promptings of this sort have a nasty habit of sinking back far too quickly into the tar pits from which they first emerged. I might not type up notes before starting a novel (see Chapter 4) but I do meticulously write these elbow-joggings down as soon as they have come to me, on a pad or Post-It if there’s one handy, or on the torn-off corner of a newspaper or envelope if not. It’s often the case that – once produced – there’s no need to refer to these small scraps of paper. The simple act of writing on them is an aide memoire in itself. But I always make sure to rifle through them once a new draft is complete, discarding those that have already been used and keeping those that might just still be helpful.But is that the only thing that your subconscious does, simply jog your elbow? No, it tries to guide your entire journey through the telling of a story, and it does that thing by leaving clues.It is important – at this point – to understand how the subconscious mind works in the first place. This might sound unhelpful from a writer’s point of view, but it does not use words as a medium the way the thinking part of the mind does. It does not form sentences, nor does it decide that one adjective is better than another. No, all it largely does is throw up dreamlike images and vague conceptions which the conscious part of the mind absorbs. Your conscious mind translates those images, solidifies them with real detail, and then turns them into prose. In fact, it might be said that writing is a process where the two separate parts of your mind start ‘interfacing.’The trouble is that you are often so fixated with the conscious act of completing your story, you might well miss the true significance of what those images are trying to tell you. Let me illustrate this point with an example from real life.One of my oldest friends occasionally enjoys taking a crack at writing fiction. He was halfway through a long sf story one time, but had got stuck in terms of plot, and so he asked for my advice.His story was a post-apocalyptic one, set within a blasted landscape populated by barbaric characters, but with some technology still intact. His Character A was down in the desert. His Character B was up in the air above that desert in – if memory serves – a rather battered but still functioning flying machine.“I need to have these two characters meet,” my friend said, “but I can’t figure out how to make that happen.”I gave his last few paragraphs another glance. Character A was looking up at Character B’s flier, which was already moving off into the distance. But the flying machine … it was not only battered, it was leaving in its wake a thin, dark trail of smoke.And there’s the point at which my friend’s subconscious had dropped him a clue, except he didn’t have enough experience to see it.“There’s something wrong with that flying machine. So have it crash land, and your characters can meet that way.”Which doesn’t merely solve that immediate problem – it opens up whole realms of possibility in terms of plot and character development. Here are just a few of the options from this point on:1/ A rescues B from the crashed, burning flyer. They become close friends and allies.2/ A and B were enemies before the crash. But now B feels indebted to A, which has consequences later on.3/ A pulls B from the flier, but B is badly hurt. A feels compelled to nurse him back to health.And so on.The fact that your subconscious mind already knows your story means that what you have already written holds the keys to what you will write next. The details you have set on paper … they might seem to have been chosen arbitrarily, but that is not the case. Somewhere in the far, dark reaches of your mind, the tale you’re working on is already complete. And another word for complete is ‘whole,’ every aspect of your story having relevance to every other part.If you mention a river near the start of your story, that river is sure to put in another appearance sometime later on. Literally or figuratively? That’s up to you, a conscious decision, except that it was prompted in the first place by your latter brain.Halfway through your story, your character stubs his toe? You might see that as an amusing detail at the time of writing it … but what if he has to run for his life in the later pages of your book?I spoke in the last chapter about ‘little silver bells,’ the process of seeding your story with tiny hints of what is coming next, so leading your reader’s train of thought in the appropriate direction. That’s a conscious process, a deliberate act of will. But while you’re writing, even when you’re resting, your subconscious mind keeps doing the same, making sure you describe details that will have relevance later on. The real skill lies in spotting and deciphering those tiny clues. And you develop that skill the way you do most others, through experience and practice. The worst example of the output of a writer who’s ignored both processes – the conscious and subconscious one – is a story which culminates in what US magazine editors used to call a ‘banana surprise’ ending. That is, an ending which was never once hinted at in the entire course of the preceding story. Your female character – let’s say – is married to a violent bully. All throughout the story, she is nervous, timorous, and cowed. She never seems to leave the house except to go out shopping or attend her yoga class. And then, right at the very end, it turns out she’s been having an affair for ages with her husband’s boss, and they’ve been working out the perfect scheme to do away with Mr. Nasty. You can almost hear the writer of that bellowing tah-dah! But no, a story’s not that kind of conjuring trick. A surprise ending is a trick, though, and you need to be extremely artful in the way you pull it off. Have your female character come home three hours late and smelling of a man’s cologne and you’ll have given away the game completely. Your reader will roll his eyes and move on to another book.But wait. But softly …When Mr. Nasty happens home one day, his wife is talking on the phone. She hangs up quickly. “Just my sister,” she says calmly. And your reader will most probably think nothing of it.But your female gets back slightly late from yoga class on one occasion because her instructor “asked me to help tidy up the mats.”And on another occasion, she gets in her car and drives half an hour to a different part of town because “the local stores just don’t have what I need.”Taken on their own, these three small incidents will seem like nothing but the fine detail good writers fill a story with. Only that when your reader reaches the conclusion, he’ll go: “Aha, that’s who she was talking with, that’s why she was late from class, if there really was a class at all, and that’s why she was gone so long when simply shopping!” All the little silver bells you’ve put in place start ringing in his head at once.But your subconscious mind is doing that to you the entire time. Be aware of that process and make use of the help it gives you.Don’t give in to it entirely, though. Your subconscious might be brilliantly creative and can tell you which direction you should go, but it lacks the discipline required to turn its images into a finished piece of fiction. No, your intellect must do the rest.Which brings us to plotting.

THE TRIBE -- A CALIFORNIAN CRIME THRILLER

It's been a long while coming, but my second full-blown crime novel (no supernatural events, no magic) is now out.

My detective Matt Barrett first appeared in 2014 in the short novel The Desert Keeps Its Dead . And he's one of the favorite characters that I've invented, a former FBI agent who quit the Bureau after a dispute and now works as a private operative ... sometimes operating right outside the law when he can see no other choice.

And now he's back in this much longer thriller, courtesy of CD Publications and my new editor Norman Prentiss. The location this time is the central Californian town of Los Acantilados, an apparently pleasant coastal town (los acantilados means 'the cliffs') with a good number of wealthy residents. But -- as with Desert -- all is not precisely as it seems. There is a lot of ugliness and criminality hovering beneath the surface. Including murder, yes, and some crimes even worse.

Here is the back-cover blurb:

It couldn’t sound like a simpler job. Young Lacey Morganstern has fallen in with a bad crowd of spoiled, unruly rich kids and her mother wants her back.

But as Matt Barrett finds out more about the teenagers who call themselves “the Tribe,” the whole case starts to take on darker layers. Why the secret rendezvous at night? What are privileged kids doing hanging out with violent gangs? And then there is the matter of the Orange Grove Ranch, just outside the wealthy town of Los Acantilados.

A deadly game is being played where human lives don’t count for very much. And it isn’t too much longer before Matt is fighting for his own.

THE TRIBE is available on Amazon Kindle.

Also on B&N Nook.

And if you'd rather read the paperback, then here's the link to use.

MY FANTASY SERIES IS ON SPECIAL OFFER

There were REAL WITCHES in Salem back three hundred years ago. They fled from there before the Witchcraft Trials of 1692, moving to a lesser-known community … Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts. And that town has been filled with magic – both the good kind and the bad kind – ever since.That's the premise for my Raine's Landing series of fantasy thrillers. And now 5 of the 6 novels (DARK RAIN, MIDNIGHT'S ANGELS, DEADLY VIOLET, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and WITCH HUNTER) are on special offer at minimum price on Kindle ... that's 99p in the UK, about $1.28 in the States.You can also pick 3 of the novels up on Nook, Kobo etc. for around the same price, with the other 2 due in those formats in the next couple of weeks.
You can view the Raine's Landing series on Kindle HERE.  On B&N Nook HERE. On Kobo HERE.And on Smashwords HERE.

DONALD TRUMP'S 'MEXICAN WALL'? I PREDICTED IT IN 2005!

People who insist on saying 'Told you so' don't generally make themselves too popular. Not, that is, unless they're science fiction writers, and i do write sf occasionally. The likes of Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clarke are at least as famous for their accurate predictions as their storytelling skills. And practically a dozen years ago, I sat down and wrote a near-future short novel called 'Beyond the Western Walls,' in which the developed world has cut itself off completely from the Third World. Including -- yup -- a huge great wall along the US-Mexican border. It first appeared in the collection 'Ghost Dance' from Sarob Press, but is now available in my eBook collection 'Dark Futures: SF Meets Horror,' which can be found on Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords. And a few other locations too, I shouldn't doubt. I'm too busy predicting stuff to list them all.

WHERE DO I GET MY IDEAS FROM? PLACES LIKE JAPAN, ACTUALLY.

I'm mostly known for writing scary supernatural stuff and -- these days -- tough, hard-bitten crime novels as well. But, as Jack Bristow said in the TV show Alias, 'no person is just one thing.' Which means that I'll occasionally come out with a much gentler supernatural tale than is my norm. One of them is free on Amazon this weekend, and it's a story that has its own story behind it.I'd already visited Japan once before, the main island of Honshu, starting at Yokohama, and then taking in Tokyo, Kyoto, and a lot of points in between, Mount Fuji included. And I'd already written stories set in those locations.But back in 2005, the opportunity arose to visit Kyushu, Japan's southernmost island. And it turned out to be a completely different deal from its far bigger sister. Tropical, quite like Hawaii, with palm trees and golden beaches. Extremely volcanic too, with geysers and fantastical pumice sculptures along some shorelines where flowing lava had hit the ocean and had formed weird outlines as the water cooled it. But Kyushu is also the historic and spiritual home of the Shinto religion, the place where the Japanese gods are supposed to have settled when they came down to our world, and so the place is full of the most fascinating shrines and temples too, some of them in striking locations. On beaches, next to waterfalls, even in a cave beside the sea. What inspiration for a writer of imaginative fiction! By the time my ten day trip was over, I already had a story set there burning a big hole inside me.It was a grueling journey back, 22 hours, involving three planes and a long connecting coach trip. Once home -- naturally -- I collapsed into bed. But I only stayed there for about three hours. Hauled myself up, fixed myself a cup of coffee, went straight to my laptop and started work on 'HANAKO FROM MIYAZAKI.' I completed it in just two days. It first appeared in CD magazine the following year, but now it is available as an eBook, along with several other of my gentler and more wistful tales. So ... where do I get my ideas from? Now you know.

ALL THE RAINE'S LANDING NOVELS ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

E-books are wonderful things, and I've been publishing my own -- both new fiction and reprints -- for a good few years now. But a lot of people still prefer a paperback, the feel of it, the solidity of it. And the sad fact is that when it comes to my Raine's Landing supernatural thrillers, there've been no hard copy versions of the last three novels. They have only been available to readers digitally.

Until now.

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that I have finally put that right, and there is now a fine-looking trade paperback of every last Raine's Landing novel save the second one. Let's deal firstly with the three books that are having their first outing in this style.


DEADLY VIOLET sees a beggar girl getting hold of an extremely powerful magic jewel. When she begins using it, the boundaries of reality begin to crumble and break down. Ross and Cassie and the rest are suddenly confronted with bizarre monsters roaming the streets ... and that's just for starters. As the fabric of existence continues to come apart, everything becomes considerably more frightening . And the only way to stop it is for Ross and Cass to set off on the strangest journey of their lives.


In SPEAK OF THE DEVIL, the town's major adepts start being attacked  by mysterious cloaked, hooded men. And when Ross and Cass investigate, they begin to uncover the horrifying truth. It's people from inside the town who are responsible for this ... some of Raine's Landing's own citizens have turned  to Devil-worship. They plan to deliver the whole of the Landing over to the forces of Hell. And to ensure this happens, demons have already arrived in the town, disguised as human beings.


And in WITCH HUNTER, the sixth and latest in the series, and old-time witch from back before the time the Salem witches came returns to life and re-visits Raine's Landing, bringing her own lethal brand of magic with her. But that's not the biggest problem Ross and Cassie have to face. The man who killed that witch is also back, and he's considerably more powerful than her, since he is in the service of a very ancient being whose one desire is to destroy the Universe itself.

As for the first Raine's Landing novel -- DARK RAIN -- and the third -- MIDNIGHT'S ANGELS -- there have been paperback versions of both titles  in the past, but they are now also available in this  smart new format.

There's a link to the page for all five novels here.

 

THE VIEW FROM A LAKE

It's been a good long while since I have blogged about anything except my own fiction. And -- okay -- there has been quite a bit to talk about in that regard. But I sometimes do do other things than write. I even manage to snag the occasional vacation. And Louise and I are just back from ten days in the Italian Alps, beside Lake Garda. It was scorching hot. The food ranged from pretty good to utterly fantastic. The views were amazing, and this has to count as the first time that either of us have regularly swum in a freshwater lake.

But -- using local transport and the excellent bus boats -- we managed to visit a good few other towns as well than Desenzano (the one that we were staying in).

Here's the tiny but beautiful Garda:



Here is Sirmione, out on a long peninsula that juts into the lake:


One of the favorite towns we visited was Bardolino, home of the world famous wine of the same name. A charming, airy place with very much a Venetian feel to its architecture.


Another quite small town here, but very historic, Lazise:


And last but not least, we spent a great afternoon in the famous and very beautiful city of Verona:


Hope that you enjoyed these photos. Until next time, ciao!

NEW ON KINDLE -- TWO EXTREMELY DIFFERENT TYPES OF GHOST

If there's one thing I love to write, it's stories with a sting in the tail, Roald Dahl-type stories where the last line knocks the reader sideways. I've written quite a number of them down the years, but honestly believe The Woman in Brown to be my very best, so far at least. It's a ghostly mystery tale that starts in London in the late 1950's and then moves on to the present day. I'm not going to tell you any more than that. But Linda Landrigan, the editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, snapped it up the moment that she read it. And now, a year on from its publication in that magazine, it's available on Kindle.









Postcards from Terri goes back much further than that. A short novel of slightly over 32,000 words, it was first published in 2004 by the respected indie publisher Sarob Press. It resurfaced in 2007 in my Pendragon Press collection 'No-Man and Other Tales,' and appeared in the States in 2010 in my Dark Regions Press collection 'Our Lady of the Shadows.' It's a tale about two friends who have led very different lives since leaving college. Steve Corlingsten's existence hasn't turned out well ... he is divorced, has a job he hates, and life has generally proved to be a massive disappointment. Whereas Terri Campion has traveled the world, lived in various countries, had affairs with rich and famous men, and lived out her existence to the fullest. And the novel starts with these two very different people being reunited. There is just one problem. Terri's dead. She was killed in a car crash a few days back, and is appearing to Steve as a ghost.

Now Postcards from Terri is available on Kindle too.

OH NO! OH MY GAAAD! I'VE TURNED INTO A PUBLISHER!

I've been dealing with publishers since 1987, when my first novel -- the Bram Stoker shortlisted The Harvest Bride -- originally appeared from Tor Books in the States and then from Headline in the UK (my editor was the famed Jo Fletcher in the latter case). I've sat in their offices discussing my work. I've gone out on drinking sessions with them, occasionally to the severe detriment of my health. And they've been nice enough to buy me lunch or dinner on a number of occasions. I've always found them to be pleasant enough people. They've done their very best to present my novels well and to promote them. Which is not to say that my relationships with these guys haven't had their ups and downs. But in nearly thirty years, I would never, ever once have believed I might become a publisher myself one day (I'm talking proper, solid books, not e-ones).

Except that now it's happened. Blow me down. Above is the cover of the premiere novel from Raine Manor Publications, Raine Manor being the ancestral home of the craziest magician in my Raine's Landing series of fantasy novels.

Dark Rain -- the first of them -- originally appeared in 2008 from Eos/HarperCollins, introducing readers to a spellbound Massachusetts town inhabited by powerful wizards like Judge Samuel Levin, Woodard Raine, and Doctor Lehman Willets, but also by ordinary people armed with no magical powers but with boundless courage and resolve instead, like Ross Devries and Cassie Mallory, the heroes of the piece. The book garnered a lot of rave reviews and got me more fan emails than I've had in quite a while. But it only ever came out as a mass market paperback and, after 8 years, the only hard copy that you're likely to be able to get hold of is a battered secondhand one.

Only that now, there is this fine-looking trade paperback version , courtesy of RMP. And now that I have got the look and layout absolutely right, I will be releasing copies of the other novels in the series in the next couple of weeks,

You can find out more about this new edition of Dark Rain here.

WELCOME TO BIRCHIAM-ON-SEA

I haven't done much in the way of blogging -- or anything else on social media -- for a good long while. Why? Because the work of writing novels has been eating me alive of late. I honestly believed that I would finish the sixth in my Raine's Landing series -- Witch Hunter (see below) -- by Xmas 2015. It had already been through seven or eight drafts, after all. But I started reading what I'd done a few days before the holiday break, and realized that I still wasn't satisfied with it. Christmas and New Year passed, and I started work again. And it took me three more very intensive drafts to get the story reading just the way it should. It was mentally fatiguing work, but well worth it to get Ross and Cassie's latest, greatest, and most heart-gripping adventure right.

And I was planning to take a long break after that, but ... what is it they say about no rest for the wicked? My second full-blown crime novel -- The Tribe, a follow up to 2014's The Desert Keeps Its Dead  --  is due out later this year from Cemetery Dance Publications. And since there is a third installment in the story of my fictional detective, I realized I'd better get cracking and start writing it. Which is what I'm doing right now (I am on a break this afternoon), only stopping every so often to do some research on stuff like assault weaponry and helicopters (yes, you read that last word right).

But however much you try to hide behind your laptop, the world moves on regardless. The world of publishing especially. And so much has been going on the last few months, it is going to take me three whole postings to describe it all.

The first matter to deal with is the book above.  I've been writing short horror and dark fantasy stories set in the fictional south-coast English town of Birchiam-on-Sea for the past ten years. The first -- The Waiters -- appeared in Weird Tales. And since then, Birchiam stories have shown up in Black Static magazine, the Black Book of Horror, and top anthologies like The British Invasion. And now all of them have been collected together by Trevor Denyer, editor of the esteemed Midnight Street magazine. It's a truly wonderful-looking book, and there's even an introduction -- explaining the whole concept behind Birchaim -- by a certain T. Richards. Moon on Dark Water: The Birchiam Chronicles is available both as a Kindle and as a good old-fashioned paperback book.