Pratap Divyesh's Blog, page 27
September 16, 2017
How Do I Create My Male Characters?
I am often asked how I manage to portray my male characters so realistically? Is it difficult to switch from gender to gender and be equally convincing, giving them the same depth?
Well, after all, both female and male characters are people, and this is where the skill lies – in writing about people and their intertwined relationships honestly, skillfully and in-depth.
The majority of my novels are written in the first person perspective and in the body of one novel I write in both genders. When I start the story writing as a woman the reader enters into the world of certain sensibility. I am not talking of stereotyping and typical ‘female sensibility’, as my women are often very strong-headed with very distinguished characteristics and strength of character and psyche, but still, regardless of their strong personalities they are female characters.
Being a woman, it is easy for me to sympathise with any of my female characters regardless of their age, nationality or any kind of background. I can portray with equal zest and plasticity the girl of a tender age or a woman whose rich and long life is nearing its end, as I do in my books.
Characters mostly choose their narrator. I can say that convincingly having experienced that a number of times with my characters: they come, I start the story and they take over!
I am not going to claim that I get my male characters perfect as they are very demanding, capricious, strong-headed and tend to hide their feelings. I have to dig deep to discover their real feelings, and the depth of them, but the more reluctant they are to uncover their feelings the more determined I am to dig them out and expose them to the light of day. I love exploring human feelings, the reasons why we do what we do, why we act the way we act, what lies deep down that governs our behavior and leads us to chose a certain path.
When I was growing up I read classic literature.
There were only two female writers that were assigned as compulsory literature in high school: Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen; the rest were male writers, therefore I read many great writers whose characters were predominantly male characters. I was fascinated by the majority of them, by their secret inner world, their psyche, the way they thought, acted, by their view of women et cetera.
My male characters are so far from my psyche that it seems like an almost impossible task to ‘get them right’. The only thing I had in common with the character of Vito Del Bianco was – we were both writers. He is a womanizer, a bon vivant, heavy drinker, cynic, and a cunning man. He loved and lived on the wild side taking advantage of people and situations.
Just like Nicholas O’B, a selfish, self-destructive wannabe writer, a gambler, liar, cheat and a skilled master of manipulation and deceit.
Otto Visconti is a misfit. A poet who interprets the world in a very unique way: he is suspicious, overwhelmingly pessimistic showing poor and degenerate demeanor and lifestyle due to the lack of self-confidence and inner strength. He blames his parents for his misfortunes and lack of stamina, mainly his mother, which makes him create an unreal view of women, unreal expectations and ridiculous, unsuccessful attempts to charm any woman or win any friend.
How do I fit there? Under the skin of such a character or in his milieu?
I let them be. I let them express themselves; I listen to them.
I evoke and explore old memories, the place where I store all the characters I’ve ever met; I study people thoroughly all the time and ask myself constantly, ‘How does he feel right now?’, ‘Why did he say that and how can I see on his face, in his gestures that he really meant it?’, ‘What is his body language saying about him, his feelings and hidden motives?’
I endlessly analyse my characters. I sympathise and empathise with them trying to get out of me all those feelings that they might feel or might hide.
While I write about them I live their lives, I get into their heads and I converse with them asking them to reveal their deepest thoughts, secrets and dreams: pleasant, unpleasant, ordinary, wild, cruel or unselfish, the whole range of emotions. For me it matters more what they feel than how they comb their hair or what type of shirt they are wearing.
When I bring out all of their emotions I know that it is going to be convincing … surely for some of my readers; as I can’t claim that my male characters are perfect, I know, at least, that they are – colourful.
This post is contributed as Guest post by Branka Cubrilo.
About the author
I am an author of 7 written novels (written from 1981 – 2011). Five of them were published by three different publishers (I am writing in two languages).
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September 15, 2017
Signaling: A Message from the Future
In the year AD 4544, a confluence of events shatters a spacecraft in the outer reaches of the solar system, hurling its lone commander, Samantha Hunter, through time and space deep into the past.
Meanwhile, in the near future, award-winning New York Times science editor Jonathan Elliot awakens in the middle of the night to an uninvited guest who appears to have materialized out of thin air. The strange visitor tells him a story so unbelievable that Jonathan feels compelled to write a speculative feature article for the Sunday edition. This midnight visit launches a nine-day whirlwind of events that extend from New York City across the continent to Las Vegas, setting off a chain of inexplicable incidents, a national manhunt involving the top levels of government, a series of revelatory conversations about the future, and a team of unlikely collaborators in a race to save a beautiful, mysterious heroine–and quite possibly the future of the human species.
Who are we really, and where are we going? Pondering these questions and offering an uplifting message of hope for the future, this novel tells the story of an accidental time traveler stranded in the twenty-first century whose presence may change the course of humanity’s future.
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369 Days: How To Survive A Year of Worst-Case Scenarios
I wrote 369 Days to share my story of losing everything that people fear to lose, in a year’s time. This book will walk the reader through the losses, and how I came out of each challenge better and stronger than before. The book will show people how to create proper boundaries in their life, so they can prevent significant losses in their own lives.
Introduction – Chasing life goals has a cost. Focusing on the to do lists, countless e-mails, look around you. Right now wherever you are, you not only take up space, but you find yourself in one too. Maybe you’ve never considered it, but this space has incredible intentionality behind it. Someone designed it. Maybe someone else built it. And someone probably even maintains it. Hopefully, this environment is conducive for your goal: whether productivity, leisure, or study. But have you considered your leadership environment? Have you designed, built, and maintained that space too? The quality of your leadership environment determines the quality of your leadership impact.
Part 1: Burning The Candle At Three Ends – Your life and your leadership is getting the exact results it’s designed to get. When we experience undesirable results we have two choices. Average leaders focus predominantly on changing their results. This effort only produces incremental change and ultimately frustration. Exceptional leaders focus on changing their design. This effort produces exponential change and ultimately fulfillment. By designing a clear picture of the finished space we can then take the next step of building it. The first step toward getting what we want is learning what we want.
Part 2: The Cardiac Domino Effect – Suffering a health scare, which impacts your livelihood, can have long lasting effects on you, and your loved ones. Not taking care of you can create events down the road, which you will suffer greatly if not addressed properly. Health changes can impact your finances, which impacts your ability to keep the things you own.
Part 3: Growth Happens if you embrace it – With every change in your life, you have an opportunity to grow from those changes. Losing your way after a significant life event has its way of rebuilding you. Remaining optimistic through turbulent times is crucial, for you to come out on top.
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God’s Evil
Detective Brooke Scanlon may be one of the best detectives in the Boston Police Major Crimes division, but nothing prepared her for the horror in East Boston. Dozens of mutilated bodies and just a single, dead suspect, facts which don’t jibe with nearly identical attacks happening across the country.
Vampires are the farthest thing from Scott Reid’s mind. He just wants to marry his fiancée Margie and settle down for a nice, normal, quiet life. Life has other plans in mind.
As more bodies pile up, circumstance draws them into a dangerous web where the supernatural is suddenly all too real.
Vampires are attacking, hungry, vicious, and wild. Soon, Scott and Brooke are fighting to save Boston from its greatest threat ever.
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Points of View – The series
In POINTS OF VIEW, the hero is a young blind Londoner, named Horace Mayberry, who gets fitted out with some nanotronic eyes. They are inherently intelligent and can develop various functions to assist in whatever awkward situations the lad gets into. Horace is a cautious lad, who also occasionally experiences vivid dreams. He is recruited into a secret government agency in payment for his new eyes, as an apprehensive assistant to an experienced agent, Captain Aubrey Jackson, and embarks on a series of adventures, including being abducted twice by an international gang of crooks, led by Rudolph Beckmann a billionaire financier who is after the secrets of the laboratory that developed the nanotronic eyes.
Each risky situation Horace encounters, including being kidnapped twice by the terrorists gang, cause his eyes to develop new superhuman abilities as they range over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. His experiences also enable his somewhat introvert personality to evolve too, and his dreams become more meaningful as he becomes somewhat impulsive and headstrong. Horace eventually captures the terrorists’ leader but he manages to escape, leading to an exciting finale when the two agents, backed up by a Spanish SWAT team, try to locate the terrorist’s hideout in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands!
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Points of View
In the POINTS OF VIEW series, the hero is a young blind Londoner, named Horace Mayberry, who is a cautious lad, who occasionally enjoys vivid dreams of being a secret agent. Then he becomes fitted with superhuman, nanotronic, eyes for free, but there is a catch.. They are inherently intelligent and can develop various functions to assist in whatever awkward situations he experiences. In payment for the eyes, he is recruited into a secret government agency as an apprehensive assistant to an experienced agent and embarks on a series of adventures, including being abducted twice by an international gang of terrorists. Their leader, Rudolph Beckman, is a billionaire financier who is after the secrets of the laboratory that developed the nanotronic eyes. He uses a trio of henchmen to do his bidding.
Each risky situation Horace encounters causes his eyes to develop something new, and enables his introvert personality to evolve too. His dreams become more meaningful as he becomes somewhat impulsive and headstrong. The exciting finale in this first volume covers an attack by the two agents, backed up by a Spanish SWAT team, on the crooks hideout in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands!
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September 14, 2017
Passion’s Dream by Julie Shelton
He’d despaired of ever seeing her again…yet here she is. And she’s in trouble.
Retired Navy SEAL Clay “Raven” Nighthorse is ready to turn down a routine job protecting a woman being stalked by a vengeful ex. Until he realizes this job is anything BUT routine. His client is the woman he met on a beach three years ago. The woman with whom he’d felt an instant connection. The woman who has been haunting his dreams ever since.
Leah Stanhope has never forgotten the stranger who’d simply held her that day and let her cry out her anguish at her husband’s betrayal. And now, fate has brought them together again in a conflagration of sizzling passion and deadly danger. Is she willing to risk her heart? Especially since, when danger closes in, he’s willing to risk his life?
If you like hot alphas, kinky sex, and thrilling suspense, then you’ll love Passion’s Dream.
Interview with the Author
Q – So what makes The Doms of Passion Lake series so special?
The Doms of Passion Lake are a group of former Navy SEALs who buy a bankrupt, derelict town in rural Virginia and turn it into a thriving resort community. They are all Dominants who live the D/s lifestyle. Some of them are in menage relationships, some are bisexual, all are hot and hunky and looking for love. But the stories are more than just erotic romances. They are filled with adventure and suspense. When danger closes in, these men spring into action, drawing upon the highly-specialized skills they learned in the military in a life-and-death struggle for their very survival.
Q – Should I read the books in order?
Each book in the series is a stand-alone story and can be read in any order. However, reading them in order will enhance the over-all experience.
Q – Why should I give these books a try?
Because they are fast, fun, sexy thrill rides that will leave you breathless. All these books have been in the top 100 Erotic best-sellers, one of them debuting at number seven and remaining in the top hundred for three months. They have been nominated for various awards, including Romance Review’s Top Pick and the prestigious BDSM Writers Con Golden Flogger Award.
If you love books that cause spontaneous combustion of both panties and electronic devices, or stories with tons of romance, blistering sex, mystery, and hair-raising adventure, I invite you to check out The Doms of Passion Lake. You’ll want to move there.
What people are saying about The Doms of Passion Lake Series
5 STARS!
By Shannon F
I freaking LOVED this book! Shelton knows how to write hot, sweaty, make you shiver sex with an amazing plot to boot. Deserves 10 stars!!!
5 STARS!!!!
By Lisa M.
“Julie’s books are on my top list of go-to authors like Cherise Sinclair and Shayla Black.”
5 STARS!!!
By Marial Sanders
“I want to move to Passion Lake! The Doms who live there are the hottest, sexiest, and most loving men in the world!!”
5 STARS!!!
By Gerianne Slavinski
“I wish I could give this more than 5 stars, it rocked! From the very beginning (these books) grab you and hold on to you until the last word. They have everything you could want…hot alphas, suspense, love, hot alphas, romance, betrayal, and, you guessed it…hot alphas!”
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September 13, 2017
Tall Tales by Jack Kregas
This is a book of three unrelated short stories plus a bonus story.
1. IT’S THERE FOR THE TAKING!
Christmas 1963, a US Army payroll was robbed in Garmisch, Germany. The $2 million in cash was never recovered. Some say this is not fiction but a true story. Some say they know the perpetrators.
2. LOPEZ
Lopez was a pitcher with the New York Mets who had to prove to himself and to the fans that he was worthy. When is the next step one too many? A story of courage for every reader.
3. SINNER SID
Sydney (Sinner Sid) Moffit was an evangelist with a difference. As a ‘sin consultant’ he advised on which decadent activity to choose. People either loved him or absolutely despised him. Sid was also a sex addict.
Including free bonus story: MORRIS MORRIS
Morris Morris is a man who believed the exciting life he had once had enjoyed, was ending. A chance meeting with Sheila, an ensuing romance, a friend’s death, and an unusual business idea, transforms Morris Morris.
Getting to know Morris Morris may save you a bundle of money!
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Tall Tales
This is a book of three unrelated short stories plus a bonus story.
1. IT’S THERE FOR THE TAKING!
Christmas 1963, a US Army payroll was robbed in Garmisch, Germany. The $2 million in cash was never recovered. Some say this is not fiction but a true story. Some say they know the perpetrators.
2. LOPEZ
Lopez was a pitcher with the New York Mets who had to prove to himself and to the fans that he was worthy. When is the next step one too many? A story of courage for every reader.
3. SINNER SID
Sydney (Sinner Sid) Moffit was an evangelist with a difference. As a ‘sin consultant’ he advised on which decadent activity to choose. People either loved him or absolutely despised him. Sid was also a sex addict.
Including free bonus story: MORRIS MORRIS
Morris Morris is a man who believed the exciting life he had once had enjoyed, was ending. A chance meeting with Sheila, an ensuing romance, a friend’s death, and an unusual business idea, transforms Morris Morris.
Getting to know Morris Morris may save you a bundle of money!
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The Cranky Little Princess
The Cranky Little Princess is the story of a 5 year old with a bad attitude.
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