Alastair Rosie's Blog, page 8
January 1, 2014
Happy New Year
So what are your memories of 2013 and hopes for 2014?
For me it was a year I finally took the plunge and published The Deepening Dark, book one in my Outlaw Queen series. The book has been sitting on my hard drive for years and I would keep going back to it for yet another edit and knowing the story was getting tired or maybe I was just getting tired of rereading the same stuff over and over. It's a peculiarity of mine that I strive for perfection in my work and yet when I reach what I would call a publishable standard I find myself crawling over broken glass because it's not good enough.
I think one lesson to take out of 2013 is that there will never be an end to editing. You can go back over your old pieces and see where it could have been tightened up. Likewise I found myself reading books that could have been better if the author had fixed a few things or done a better job of editing. Your book for better or worse needs to be read and you've got to take the plunge and say to hell with it, I'm putting it out there. That doesn't mean you can skimp on editing or plotting character arcs but at the end of the day you've got to call it quits and say that's the best I can do for now.
My vampire novel that I wrote during Nanowrimo 2012 is still sitting there and in 2013 I was able to take a short story about one of the characters, Cat and turn it into a novel that will be finished in January. Cat's Story is the working title for this prequel to the vampire book. It's up on Wattpad now and I'm still getting my head around that particular site. But if you want to check out what I'm writing next then head on over to Wattpad and check out the next book.
Annals of the Grey Raven: Cat's Story
So it's been an interesting year for me. This year I'm looking forward to putting more books out there on Smashwords and it has become my preferred platform due to the ease of uploading and the fact I can publish in multiple formats. I've already started formatting a collection of short stories and am looking at a sci-fi thriller set some time in the future.
This is in keep with one valuable piece of advice that I picked up last year. Write often and publish often. The more books you get out there the better chance you've got of raising your profile. Not every book has to be FANTASTIC and MOVING, it just has to entertain the reader. You won't make the New York Times bestseller list with every book but at least you're getting your name out there. A potential reader might not buy your latest book but if they look at the other books you've written, which usually appear under the book details they might find something else that appeals to them. One of the advantages of becoming an indie author is the freedom to write what want when you want. You are the master of your own fate.
And that's enough for me. Have a pleasant day and I hope 2014 is all you wished for.
Cheers,
Alastair Rosie
December 23, 2013
Merry Xmas to all!
It's been a productive week for me. I've been branching out and putting out feelers and making a few changes. One of the most dramatic changes was uploading The Deepening Dark to Amazon, (KDP). It took a bit to take the plunge as I'd been put off by the KDP Select program, which would have forced me off Smashwords and every other retailer for 90 days. I do like Amazon, I buy quite a lot of books from them but I won't allow my work to be limited to just one retailer.
That being said KDP Select is an option for those who have a few books in their back catalogue and can afford to lock one into the program to help promote other books.
The Amazon link is at the bottom of the page by the way.
The actual formatting is supposed to be the most difficult part but I've done my fair share of DTP back in my PageMaker/Quark XPress days and understand the process so that part was actually ridiculously easy.
Another change I made was posting half of my next novel up on Wattpad. The book has the working title Cat's Story and while I love the book I'm ambivalent about the title, it sounds too bland for me. Cat's story is told from the viewpoint of Samantha Sullivan, a young American expatriate living in Scotland and her stepmother, a 700 year old vampire named Catriona (Cat). It's a very different take on the vampire theme that may repel traditional readers of vampire books but it's certainly attracted readers who just don't read vampire stuff. The book is almost complete and half is up on Wattpad now, the other half will go up over the next week or so.
The final important change concerns this blog, which I want to utilise for showcasing other authors. These author interviews will hopefully be a regular feature and take the form of a Q & A format. If you'd like to be interviewed please email me on alastair.rosie@gmail.com with links to your works and webpage and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Well that's about it for today. Have a pleasant and relaxing Christmas and I wish you all the very best for New Year.
Cheers,
Alastair
The Deepening Dark on Amazon.
Cat's Story on Wattpad.
December 22, 2013
Grace O’Malley: Sea Queen of Connacht
Clare Island has long been associated with Grace O’Malley
Picture taken by Brendan Conway and now released into the Public Domain.
Sourced from Wikipedia..
Last week I said I would look at Telesilla but in keeping with the last post on female captains I’ve decided to go forward two thousand years to the northwest coast of Ireland and one of the most eulogised Irish women in history. Grainne O’Malley was born in 1530 in Connacht during the reign of Henry VIII and rose to become the legendary Sea Queen of Connacht. The English of course called her a pirate, an exercise in hypocrisy considering their own pirate activities. During her life she married twice and divorced both men, fought against the English and met Queen Elizabeth. Her name has been Anglicized as Grace but in Ireland she is more commonly known as Granuaile.
There have been so many tributes to Grace O’Malley that this will be just a brief article to sum up the facts as far as I can work out and hopefully point you in the right direction for further research and there is a lot of material out there on Grace O’Malley so let’s begin with the facts.
As mentioned she was born around 1530. Her father Eoghan was chieftain of the O’Malley clan and also owned a fleet of ships. As was the custom amongst Irish nobility she was fostered out to another family, a throwback to Celtic practices. When she was a child she begged her father to let her sail with him to Spain but he refused because her long hair would get caught in the ropes. Not one to be put off by such an excuse she took a knife and cut her hair short. This act of rebellion earned her the name Grainne Mhaol, maol means bald.
She was married in 1546 to Donal of the Battle (Donal an Chogaidh), an O’Flaherty and bore him three children, Owen, Margaret and Murrough. Her marriage to Donal only lasted a few years. He was killed in battle and she retook one of his castles that had been captured by the Joyces. It still stands today and is known as Hen’s Castle. However after his death she returned to O’Malley territory taking many of her O’Flaherty followers with her.
By 1556 she was married again to a man known as Iron Richard, named either for his coat of mail or the fact he owned an iron works. They were married under the ancient Brehon law, which operated alongside Ecclesiastical law and there is not enough space to write about this remarkable set of laws that have their modern equivalent in Western statutes. One of those concerned the status of women, entitling them to take property into a marriage and out of it if they decided to divorce their husbands. A woman could divorce her husband under Brehon law for such things as infidelity, impotence and homosexuality, as well as other reasons. A man could strike his wife but if he left a mark on her face she could demand the bride price as compensation.
A year after the marriage, Grace divorced her husband, reportedly shouting from the window of Castle Rockfleet, “Richard Burke, I divorce you.” Since she was currently in possession of the castle she got to keep it and it has remained in her family ever since.
Another story concerns the time when her first husband’s old enemies, the Joyces attempted to take back Cock Castle in the Lough, Carrib but she defended it against them successfully, it was renamed Hen’s Castle after that and the name has stuck ever since.
O’Malley gained quite a name for herself in the 1560s when she inherited her father’s fleet and began plundering far and wide, from the west coast of Scotland to Waterford. She exacted taxes from passing vessels and afterwards her ships would retreat into the bays. Grace had quite a following, having brought many of the O’Flaherty’s back to her homeland. She wasn’t above fighting alongside the English as well as against them either. Suffice it to say, she had gained such a reputation that in 1593 Richard Bingham complained that she had been the source of a great many rebellions these last forty years. That was about the time two of her sons and her half brother were captured by Bingham. She sailed to England to petition Elizabeth for their release and famously refused to bow to the queen because in her eyes, no English monarch had claim to Ireland. Nevertheless she must have impressed Elizabeth because the queen acceded to her demand that the English governor, Bingham, be removed from office and even agreed that he must return the cattle and land he’d stolen, in return she asked that Grace stop raiding English ships. This Grace agreed to and Bingham was recalled to England. However the cattle and land were not returned and when Elizabeth later sent Bingham back to Ireland Grace realised the meeting had been futile and went back to raiding English ships although during the Nine Years War she fought against England’s enemies.
Grace reportedly died in 1603 at Rockfleet castle although the time and place of her death are still disputed to this day but what was noted even years after her death was that she was a natural leader of men.
Today the old province of Connacht is still officially considered one of the provinces of Ancient Ireland and has been subdivided into the following counties: Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, and Siligo, the area also has the highest concentration of native Irish speakers With that we leave the northwest coast of Ireland and travel east and back fifteen hundred years to the First Century and the revolt of the Icenians under Boudica.
I’ve left some links for you to follow below.
The actual history of Grace by Anne Chambers.
Granuaile
By Anne Chambers
The Pirate Queen: The Story of Grace O’Malley is a fictional account of Grace O’Malley
By Alan Gold.
The Wikipedia article
And yes the legendary sea queen has her own website, courtesy of Anne Chambers
An exiled queen, a band of elves and the warrior cult known as the she bears are all that stands between General Bolksta and his conquest of Haydutia. Rhianna will need the luck of the gods if she is to hold back the tide of evil as an imperial army invades her country intent on turning Haydutia into just another province.
Smashwords edition
NEW! Now on Amazon.
December 15, 2013
Why I Hate Marketing
It's been nearly three weeks since The Deepening Dark was released and I'm discovering why I hate marketing so much. In two words, it sucks. It sucks up time that could be spent writing, it sucks up time that I need to spend doing other things like, eating, sleeping, and what's that weird smell coming from the kitchen sink? I must get something to clean the pipes but you get the picture.
At the moment I feel like I'm standing on a shore looking out over the water and trying to decide which way to go first. There are a few options out there and most of them seem pretty good but I'm stumbling over the one thing I need the most, clarity.
I keep thinking back to a quote attributed to my favourite actress, Jodie Foster. "If I failed I will have failed my way." Or something like that. I guess when you sit back and look at the big picture with the benefit of a few years under your belt you realise more and more that life moves to its own pace. What goes around comes around and if you make a mistake it's not the end of the world, unless you're standing outside the Pentagon after rumbling the NSA to the world press. Then you will have to do as Roger Waters sings and run like hell.
There are things I have to try and some might pan out and others will be a dead loss. One of the things I learned from my last book The Boston Slasher was not to pay anyone for publishing, end of story. No caveats, fine print or ah buts allowed. If a publisher believes in you enough to actually take your document and turn it into a book then they pay ALL the costs up front and pay you royalties once they've recouped their costs. I'm having a second look at The Boston Slasher and contemplating how to get it back from the publisher but that's a story for another day. No reputable publisher EVER asks you to pay and the same goes for agents. Never ever hand over a reading fee to an agent. Basically they only make money if you do and once they've got you on their books it's incumbent on them to make you and them loads of money. The point is that we all make mistakes and hindsight is always perfect. I screwed up by letting go of the book and allowing someone else to 'handle it' for me. They're too big to sue and I can't afford a lawyer so we swallow our pride because it's not fattening as they say and move on. Learn your lessons and don't repeat the same mistake twice, well try not to anyway. We all have off days!
So with that in mind it's onward and upward, this is a long journey and I'm not looking to get famous in five minutes. I can't afford the nervous breakdown that goes with fame!
Now back to that blocked sink.
Don't forget to check out The Deepening Dark on Smashwords too! At $1.99 or £1.74 if you're on this side of the Pond it's a steal.
And while we're in marketing mode, check out Makayla Yokley's latest installment in The Violet Chronicles, Triton
Publishing Paradigm Shift. What Is Better: Amazon KDP Select or Broad Distribution?
Amazon KDP Select (KDPS) or broad distribution through multiple channels - in other words, to be or not to be. For me, it was a cause of much vacillation for the past year.
Finally, I have happily parted ways with KDP Select, not planning to ever return, barring some sort of massive revamping of their system. My books are back to B&N and Smashwords, and slowly but surely they are also posting on Kobo, Sony and Apple as well.
Very timely words of advice for us indie authors, "author beware."
Captain Artemisia
A while back I penned a short story about how a young Danish slave encountered a vampire, Morganna at the old Saxon port of Southampton. The tale can be found and downloaded here and will hopefully form part of an anthology about my vampires, Clan Grey Raven. An upcoming novel with the working title ‘Cat’s Story,’ will introduce these new vampires but back to Sigrid’s Tale. In this story I introduced Morganna, the queen of Clan Grey Raven as the captain of a trading ship who encounters Oswine, a Saxon pimp for want of a better term, and ‘negotiates’ the release of his slaves at the point of a sword.
At the time of writing I thought I was veering into dangerously fantastical mythology having a female captain of a ship. After all, this was the time of King Alfred and although he was confined to the land of the West Saxons, the influence of the church was beginning to severely restrict the roles that women took. It would become much worse for women after the Norman invasion and occupation. Morganna and her companions are strong characters, not about to be cowed into submission by anyone, male or female.
Just recently however I picked up a book from Publisher’s Warehouse in Glasgow, Warrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism by Robin Cross & Rosalind Miles. It’s a hefty tome filled with dozens of stories of women from around the world who broke through the constraints imposed by society and took the lead. There are lots of pictures to go with the stories and at the very start is the story of Artemisia, a queen of the Persian satrapy of Caria (southwestern Turkey).
We first hear of her in the writings of Herodotus and that puts her firmly in the 5th Century BCE. Her father was the satrap (king) of Halicarnassus the largest city in Caria and her mother was from Crete. She took the throne after the death of her husband because her son was still a youth we are told.
She took the throne at a time when her overlord, Xerses I was embarking on his second invasion of Greece. He had been defeated a few years previously at the Battle of Marathon but this time he meant to try again. The battles that were fought have passed into legend, the heroic stand of the Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae and the sea battles of Artemisium and Salamis. Our heroine was present at both these sea battles, we know this because a Greek writer, Herodotus wrote about her in his histories. The fact that he wrote about her is unusual, she was on the other side, and she was female. Herodotus was much maligned by his peers because he portrayed the non-Greeks in a more sympathetic light. This earned him the name, philobarbaros, literally lover of barbarians. A barbarian to the ancient Greeks was anyone who wasn’t Greek. It’s because of his critics that modern writers have paid more attention to his writings because he was mercifully free of the Greek xenophobia.
He describes her in his Histories Volume II.
Of the rest of the officers I make no mention by the way (since I am not bound to do so), but only of Artemisia, at whom I marvel most that she joined the expedition against Hellas, being a woman; for after her husband died, she holding the power herself, although she had a son who was a young man, went on the expedition impelled by high spirit and manly courage, no necessity being laid upon her.’
Interestingly enough he also credits her with being the only one of Xerses’ naval commanders to advise against a sea battle with the Greeks. She replied to his general, Mardonios in no uncertain terms.
Tell the king I pray thee, Mardonios, that I, who have proved myself not to be the worst in the sea-fights which have been fought near Euboea, and have displayed deeds not inferior to those of others, speak to him thus: Master, it is right that I set forth the opinion which I really have, and say that which I happen to think best for thy cause: and this I say, spare thy ships and do not make a sea-fight; for the men are as much stronger than thy men by sea, as men are stronger than women. And why must thou needs run the risk of sea-battles? Hast thou not Athens in thy possession, for the sake of which thou didst set forth on thy march, and also the rest of Hellas? and no man stands in thy way to resist, but those who did stand against thee came off as it was fitting that they should. Now the manner in which I think the affairs of thy adversaries will have their issue, I will declare. If thou do not hasten to make a sea-fight, but keep thy ships here by the land, either remaining here thyself or even advancing on to the Peloponnese, that which thou hast come to do, O master, will easily be effected; for the Hellenes are not able to hold out against thee for any long time, but thou wilt soon disperse them and they will take flight to their several cities: since neither have they provisions with them in this island, as I am informed, nor is it probable that if thou shalt march thy land-army against the Peloponnese, they who have come from thence will remain still; for these will have no care to fight a battle in defence of Athens. If however thou hasten to fight forthwith, I fear that damage done to the fleet may ruin the land-army also. Moreover, O king, consider also this, that the servants of good men are apt to grow bad, but those of bad men good; and thou, who art of all men the best, hast bad servants, namely those who are reckoned as allies, Egyptians and Cyprians and Kilikians and Pamphylians, in whom there is no profit
You can imagine the hastily drawn breaths after she finished talking. Xerses, as was the custom in those days, was a self styled god king and no man or woman could defy a god and expect to keep their head. Nevertheless when Mardonios relayed her message he was pleased with her reply and even commended her on her honesty.
Perhaps he should have taken her advice in hindsight. Artemisia turned out to be correct in her assessment. The Persian fleet was routed by the Greek triremes at Salamis. Artemisia was in the thick of the fighting and eventually found herself trapped and in danger of being sunk by a Greek vessel. In a bold move she turned and rammed a ship belonging to one of her allies, the Calyndians, their king, Damasithymos was on board. Herodotus states there had been bad blood between them before but as to whether that had influenced her we’re not sure. We do know that the Greek ship pursuing her turned away and Xerses was reported as saying. “My men have become women, and my women men.” With the benefit of hindsight it’s entirely possible in the confusion of battle no one knew she had sunk one of her own ships, there were no survivors.
In the aftermath of the battle Xerses seems to have come to his senses and called on her for advice and once again she didn’t hold back.
I think that you should retire and leave Mardonios behind with those whom he desires to have. If he succeed the honour will be yours because your slaves performed it. If on the other hand, he failed it will be no great matter as you will be safe and no danger threatens anything that concerns your house. And while you will be safe the Greeks will have to pass through many difficulties for their own existence. In addition, if Mardonios suffer a disaster who cares? He is just your slave and the Greeks will have but a poor triumph. As for yourself, you will be going home with the object for you campaign accomplished, for you have burnt Athens.”
Xerses heeded her advice and withdrew and with that we must leave Artemisia, we know she was richly rewarded by Xerses but as to her eventual end we only have the legend quoted by a patriarch of Constantinople some fifteen centuries later that has her falling in love with a younger man and going to an oracle to find out if she had the blessing of the gods. According to the myth the answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear and so she threw herself from a cliff. Personally I’d doubt that ending very much taking into account the sexism and bigotry that was creeping its way across Europe like a malignant cancer.
What do you think? If you’re an author, how would you portray her? Let me know in the comments box and in the next article we’ll talk about Telesilla. If you want to know a bit more about Artemisia please follow the links below and don’t forget to check out The Deepening Dark.
An exiled queen, a band of elves and the warrior cult known as the she bears are all that stands between General Bolksta and his conquest of Haydutia. Rhianna will need the luck of the gods if she is to hold back the tide of evil as an imperial army invades her country intent on turning Haydutia into just another province.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/381393
Histories of Herodotus Volume II is a free download from Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2456/2456-h/2456-h.htm
The Wikipedia article on Artemisia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_I_of_Caria
December 8, 2013
The Amazons: The Truth Behind the Fiction
Map of Near East, 100 BCE
The stories of the Amazons have been passed down to us from the ancient Greeks. Homer tells us they were the ‘equal of men’ and that their queen was Hippolyta and their capital was Themiskyra on the Black Sea. Despite their feared reputation, Homer claims they fought three battles with Greek heroes and lost every battle. The most famous battle was reportedly between Hercules and Hippolyta on one of his twelve labours. He was sent to retrieve the girdle of Hippolyta, a metaphor for the garment that protected her womanhood and bring it back to Eurystheus, the king of Argos, Mycenae and Tiryns. In the subsequent duel he defeats her and brings the girdle back as a trophy, which enrages the Amazons. When Theseus kidnaps Antiope and takes her back to Greece they go to war against the Greeks. It goes badly for the Amazons when Antiope is killed and they withdraw to their home. A similar tale involves Bellerophon who was tasked with defeating the Amazons after he’d killed the Chimera. The last time we hear of the Amazons is at Troy where they took the side of the Trojans and Penthesilea is killed by Achilles.
This however leaves us more questions. Who were they? Did they really exist and where is the evidence for these legendary female warriors?
Did they exist?
The ancient Greeks certainly thought so and depictions of Amazonian warriors show them dressed in Scythian costumes. We should bear in mind that the Greeks referred to the area around the Black Sea and Lower Don River as Scythia, apparently unable or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of different tribes within ‘Scythia.’ Some Greek writers referred to Scythians or Sarmatians and used the terms interchangeably, often without any apparent logic. What we do know is that the Scythians lived to the north of the Black Sea and to the west of them were the Sarmatians. Both peoples were of Indo-Iranian stock and spoke Scythian, but to classify a whole smattering of tribes, who may have spoken different dialects is a bit simplistic. To Greek eyes one mounted warrior from the east would have looked and sounded like any other. What is noted however is that the women who lived around the Black Sea were more forward and confident than Greek women. We can also ascertain with some authority is that about a quarter of military style burials in that area contained women dressed for war. Thus Greek stories about Amazons may very well have come from seeing mounted female warriors. Perhaps to explain this strange phenomenon to ‘sensitive’ ears the story of the Amazons and their defeat at the hands of Hercules may very well have arisen.
It is feasible to suggest that Scythian and Sarmatian women would have known how to use a bow, spear, sword and battleaxe. After all, their menfolk could be away on the campaign trail for years at a time and it would only make sense to see to it that their womenfolk could defend themselves, their families and the precious herds and crops from other tribes. There may very well have been times when women took male slaves for the purposes of reproduction while their men were away. It would certainly fit in with the nature of a warlike people and the most fundamental drive of all, the survival of the species or tribe.
Similarly it would be wrong to label them as proto feminists. These were women who had husbands and while they had more authority than Greek women they would still have deferred to men more often than not. In such a harsh and unforgiving climate the emergence of warrior women and hunting women isn’t feminism as we know it.
With this in mind, I used the examples of Scythian, Sarmatian and Celtic women to create my she bears in The Deepening Dark. I wanted women who ‘were the equal of a man’ in battle to quote Greek writers and yet could still raise children and attend to more traditional female tasks. These women form warrior bands and train together. Their training regime is much harsher than that of men and I was quite conscious that in such a society it would be stricter. My Haydutians are dominated by men in prominent roles but give credence to the feminine fertility deities such as Sheringa, the Creator of the World. Bearing in mind that my Tuathan tribes have been engaged in internecine warfare for centuries it made sense to introduce the Cult of the She Bear. The male warriors would have given a distinct nod to warrior bands of women who could defend the village, crops and precious livestock while they were away raiding.
Next week we will look at Artemisia, a naval commander in the Persian Empire. Another strong female character is mentioned in Jenna Wimshurt’s blog on Sammuramat. Check it out!
Don’t forget to check out The Deepening Dark.
An exiled queen, a band of elves and the warrior cult known as the she bears are all that stands between General Bolksta and his conquest of Haydutia. Rhianna will need the luck of the gods if she is to hold back the tide of evil as an imperial army invades her country intent on turning Haydutia into just another province.
Acknowledgements:
Map created by Dbachmann and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Graphic created by Fiona Rennie
http://fionarenniephotos.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.blipfoto.com/FionaR
November 30, 2013
Growing a Book
It’s almost a cliche but my epic fantasy has now been published on Smashwords and it’s been an epic journey from a couple of scenes floating around in my head to a 200,000+ words novel. The original was actually much larger. I started that one back in 2001and while some of the characters have stayed, others kind of drifted off into the ether and probably belong there. The first working title was The Calling and the main character was a woman born of immortal and mortal parents who receives a call to adventure, hence the title and well, saves the world.
The final draft has seen my main character, Murron put to one side for now and she may come back in another book. The main character is the Haydutian queen, Rhianna who is ravaged and sentenced to death by the invading Bulkaran army, but after being rescued by the elves has to find the strength to recover from her wounds and unite the divided clans of Haydutia. The Deepening Dark is the new title and the sequel will be A Fire in the East.
The Deepening Dark is a good example of how a book evolves once you take your hands off the puppet strings and just let your characters do their own thing. It sounds dangerous after all, aren’t we supposed to be controlling the entrances and exits of our characters? Technically we are but our characters are based on real world characters, quite often different people go into making a single character. We writers borrow from people all the time, names, faces, hair colour, eyes, fashion and mannerisms. They all go into making a character and as we know people aren’t predictable. The cowardly type sometimes surprises you when she stands up to a school yard bully and the quarterback type might turn to water when he faces a real threat. Your characters are real people to you, in your head they live and breathe. You can hear their voices in your head and if you can’t identify with that then perhaps you need to find a new vocation because your writing will be flat and two dimensional. We won’t feel any sympathy for the death of an innocent character if you’ve created a stereotype.
The point to this of course is to have your real life characters set out on an adventure. They might be thrust unwillingly into it like Rhianna or they may ride willingly into danger like Elannesse the elven queen. She knows full well the Bulkarans have infested their ranks with goblin shock troops but hey she’s pretty handy with a sword.
My original novel might have worked the way it was going but I wasn’t happy with it. There’s a point that Christopher Vogler makes in The Writer’s Journey towards the end. He basically says that if the book doesn’t feel right then it probably isn’t right, go back and see where it needs rewriting. Trust your gut feeling in other words. If the book doesn’t read right to you then it won’t read right to other people and that’s a bad thing for writers, trust me!
The move from The Calling to The Deepening Dark actually started with the third chapter of that original novel where Rhianna makes an appearance when she’s ambushed by lizard men and saved by elves. The back story had her being driven into exile and rescued by other elves but something kept me coming back to this chapter in between pulling my hair out with the story. She was a fresh raw character, more a screaming wildcat than a winsome half immortal woman. I started thinking more about Rhianna and what had happened to her in the past. One thing led to another and I found myself going back a few years to write her story. Along the way I got rid of the lizard men and I’m glad I banished them to the ether, it felt cliched. I also took my hands off Rhianna and let stuff just happen to her. My reasoning being that I wanted to see how she would cope if my villains threw everything they could at her.
I must admit she did better than I thought. I kind of suspected she would make it as I’ve always had a certain magnetic attraction towards strong female characters. My she bears however were the biggest surprise of all, a band of Amazonian type warriors cutting throats and in general hacking and slashing their way through goblin and Bulkaran ranks with great abandon. That brought on another series of rewrites until I got to a draft that finally felt right to me.
I know this story has taken the better part of twelve years to tell, although I was working on other books in that time too, but I feel in my heart this was the way it had to be. Some books just write themselves and I’ve been there before, but other books need to grow inside you and no matter how many times you put it aside and hide the story in multiple subdirectories it’s like a stone in your shoe that trips you up at the wrong time. It will always come back to haunt you until you finally open up the document and start writing again. It’s true that there are some books you were born to write and if you don’t finish the book your characters will die with you. Without being too dramatic your characters were born in your head and without you recording their conversations and their actions we will never meet them. So what are you sitting reading this for? Get back to writing and don’t ever be afraid to pluck a minor character who plays a bit part in your work in progress, she could be the heroine who saves the world, and your book.
Next week we will be looking at the role of the female warrior, seeing as I’ve got legions of them in The Deepening Dark. I’ll be going over real examples from history and bringing their stories into focus. It’s a journey that starts with the mythology around the Amazons and ends sometime in this century, you’ll meet well known characters like Boudica and lesser known ones like the Tru’ung Sisters of Vietnam. Some are great and noble women and others tragically flawed, some were doomed by their circumstances and others rode the competing tides to find some kind of balance. It’s all grist for the mill for writers and I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I look forward to uncovering the truth behind the fiction and hype.
Don’t forget to check out The Deepening Dark on Smashwords, at $1.99 it’s a steal. Feel free to leave reviews on Smashwords or Goodreads.
Have a great writing week.
Cheers,
Alastair
November 11, 2013
Q and A with Author Chrissie Parker
Reblogged from Belinda Witzenhausen:
Recently, the wonderful and talented author, Chrissie Parker took a moment to share and answer a few questions about writing as well as her new release "Integrate". Welcome Chrissie!
Tell us a little about yourself. When did your interest in writing begin?
I live with my husband, who is an actor and musician, and two cats (named after Roman goddesses), in London (UK).
Great interview and the book looks really interesting
December 30, 2012
Happy New Year
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I did have something else planned for the blog this week but decided to abandon it and review 2012, the year that comes in between 2011 and 2013. We weren’t supposed to have a 2013 according to those who fell for the Mayan thing, I’m still laughing. Sorry, I had to say it.
It’s been an interesting year. Here in Britain we had a Diamond Jubilee, which gave us an extra bank holiday, I lived through my second Olympics in twelve years. The last one was back in Sydney, okay I was in Melbourne but we were still bombarded with twenty four footage whether we wanted it or not. I stayed true to form and stuck with the opening and closing ceremonies, and watched DVDs or the movie channel in between. As you can no doubt tell, sport elicits a great big yawn from me. For those who weren’t waiting for the end of the world it was a time we saw the big lawsuit(s) between Apple and Samsung. How many ways are there to make a smartphone? The American elections entertained us all in Britain with its name calling and cat fights. The GOP said some incredibly hurtful things about women and invented a phrase, forcible rape, to differentiate between other kinds of rape. Are there other kinds? I nearly had a brain haemorrhage trying to work out the meaning. Perhaps there was no meaning, but they didn’t get in and over here we all breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t be treated to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the worrying thought that American men might feel obliged to marry more than one wife. Quite a few of them can’t seem to treat the only wife they’ve got with respect and loyalty.
Oh and wait for it. I finally registered to vote. Yes ma’am. I am now a registered voter. I’ve avoided voting for years, even back in Australia where it’s illegal not to vote. Try explaining that to a big guy called ‘Kev the Bastard’ sharing your cell, just before he batters you into submission. Voting for me is a bit like pulling teeth, the last time I voted was for Tommy Sheridan and he got tossed in jail for going to swinging parties and the time before that it was Natasha Stott Despoja back in Australia because, um, she had the best legs. But nevertheless I suppose it’s one of those things we should do although I think it just encourages the maggots to crawl out of the woodwork and shower us with flattery, only to suffer collective amnesia whenever it comes to honouring a promise. Why aren’t politicians forced to repay their entire salary if they don’t keep election promises? Now even I would vote for that.
Like everyone else on the planet I waited with bated breath as the Mars Explorer parachuted to Mars but there were no Martian anti aircraft batteries trying to take it out, just a moment of nothing and then it landed and has been collecting dirt ever since. I guess that’s to add to the pile of Moon rocks brought back in the 1970s. Space exploration has become seriously boring. We haven’t found any microbes let alone a vast inter galactic empire determined to destroy us, and time travel is still impossible unless you’re in Amish country or Cornwall.
It was also the year that saw the rise of yet another North Korean Dear Leader. Seriously those guys need to see a good hair stylist because they all look like they’ve been standing in front of a turbofan. The new leader is as same as the last one and the one before him, completely and certifiably insane, but we all saw that one coming didn’t we? We watched Israel bombing Gaza yet again, something tells me the IDF doesn’t like the Palestinians although maybe that’s just a rumour. Egypt elected a president who could be even worse than the last one, and here in Britain the Conservatives and Lib Dems have cancelled all further love ins indefinitely. Now how did we in Britain know that alliance was never going to work? Let’s see, filthy rich private school boys join with Left Wing radicals to try and steer Britain out of recession? Nope, I can’t see it either. Neither did they.
On the technology front we saw the rise of the iPad, which is supposed to revolutionise the way we interact with computers. Now we can touch them and slide things around, it’s all so, freaky. As a writer I’ve yet to find a use for a tablet computer. A keyboard that won’t obey you, wi-fi access that drops out intermittently, and all it seems to do is let you watch the BBC, Sky tv and update your Facebook profile. I did however get myself a smartphone, see, I can keep up with the Joneses. It even has a Kindle reading app.
The revolution in self publishing was about the only thing that actually encouraged me. I mean now more than ever it’s easier to self publish and promote your work. Actually making money out of it is a lot harder and we’re still at a distinct disadvantage but the gaps are narrowing. Admittedly some of the books I’ve read haven’t been that good and some have been howlers, but I’ve read some decent books on Kindle and am going to publish The Deepening Dark on Kindle and probably other platforms too. I think this is probably the most exciting thing to happen to self publishing and traditional publishing since the birth of the Internet. Yes boys and girls, once upon a time daddy and mummy didn’t have an Internet, we couldn’t even send text messages, we had to like use a dial telephone and actually speak to someone or send a letter with a stamp if we wanted to communicate with other people. There was no Facebook, Twitter or Xbox 360. A games night meant turning up at someone else’s house with a chess set or Trivial Pursuit, we even had to sit in the same room and play games together. My God, how did we survive? There was no X Factor, no Britain’s Got No Talent, or American Idol. Back then if you wanted to be a singer you had to practice real hard for years, play lots of gigs and try to find a record deal.
But in all seriousness. It has been an interesting year. The world is a scarier, more complicated and exciting place than it was last year. The world keeps turning and I guess some time in the next four billion years it’ll all come to an end. Hopefully by that time we’ve all beamed ourselves to an exoplanet somewhere out there in space to avoid the coming apocalypse.
For those who followed my Hero’s Journey and commented or liked it, thank you very much for your support and I would like to wish you all a happy and healthy new year. In the next week or two I will be starting a new series retelling old myths in modern day language and translating them to modern situations. Not sure how long the series will run or how I’ll do it, but let’s dig into our past and see what inspires us. Who knows? We might even find the seeds of your next novel soon? If you do and get interviewed on Good Morning America, can you please mention the mad Aussie blogger from Scotland? Thank you!
Happy New Year everyone.
Sincerely,
Alastair Rosie
