Write Forward

Burke

2010-10-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

Where does all the time go? Well, actually it goes in writing stuff. I know most authors are so much better than I at maintaining a public profile, but I have to wonder if most of them have a two year old helping at the same time. (A two year old who is almost three!)

But to bring you up to date with what I have been doing recently and to show you some pretty pictures here is details on my new play out Nov 16th-20th, Burke. It's a different take on the story of Edinburgh's most famous serial killers. It doesn't feature Simon Pegg, but it is both laugh out loud funny in places and terrifying in others. After all, the dark times of the Old Town should SCARE you!

So in honor of Burke and Hare's final capture - which was on Halloween. Here's the details

FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE

Poor neglected blog

2010-07-13T03:06:00.000-07:00

A writer's blog is a strange animal. You might imagine it should be bursting with words and ideas, but if I'm writing here I'm not working. So when it's quiet here it doesn't mean I've stopped writing, but I'm writing more than ever.

Admittedly with the school summer holidays here that isn't always an easy task. Right now I'm typing while my toddler plays and watches a musical, rhyming show about rescuing small animals. It's a sort of baby aimed opera - and as bad as you might imagine to adult ears.

But dragging my mind back to the task at hand. I've reached the process in writing the play where I have written all the scenes and I'm about to check the ordering. It's the kind of freedom you don't get with longer prose projects, but with a six thousand word play you can metaphorically throw it all in the air and rewrite your linking lines.

Which of course shows how lucky we are to have access to wp. I've repeatedly heard the argument that wp means we have become lazy writers. We don't need to worry about ordering in story and construction because we can always change it.

But you know some of us have minds that don't happily follow linear order. I remember - and this shows you how very long ago it was - that I used to cut my draft university essays into paragraphs and then rearrange then on my bed before rewriting.

A play is exactly that - a play. It's about playing with the audiences assumptions and expectations. It's about teasing them, filtering through information drip by drip and only pulling it all together at the end when the pieces should snap together tighter than a toddler's grip on candy.

This is where I am - and because I'm writing a play based on very real events, it's hard to surprise and intrigue, but I'm working on it. I will remember to drop by here more. Honest.

Oh, and the little animals appear to have all been rescued, but it doesn't appear to have stopped them singing. Pity me.

Writing Plays

2010-06-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been dedicated to the production of my first full length play, Suspicious Minds. I was working with the Edinburgh company Siege Perilous founded by talented director, Andrew Corelli and tireless producer, Tina Finch. The play ran between the 25th and 29th May and was an incredible experience all round. The cast, Colin Little, Ruth Tapp, Alan Scott-Douglas and Bill Addison were superb.

Writing a play is quite a different process to writing a novel. I've been writing prose since I could pick up a pencil. (I won't say since I could spell because I'm still not that good at that.) When I was in the later stages at Primary school I started writing plays. I enjoyed acting and ended up providing my own plots because I liked them better. Fortunately so did my classmates. And then I stopped. I didn't try to construct a play until about eight years ago when I attended a workshop run by playwright Douglas Maxwell. My intention was to improve my dialogue for prose writing. I was very sure I had no idea and no capacity to write a play. To my astonishment I wrote my first adult play, Pulse, and rather enjoyed the experience.

For me writing a play is about constructing a huge jigsaw in your head. You need to spend most of your time thinking. After all in most hour long plays there will be less than five thousand words, while novels range from 50,000 to 100,000 words.

So how long does it take me to write a play? I can date when I began Suspicious Minds from the book I wrote about my older son - How to Survive the Terrible Twos: Diary of a mother under siege. In it there is a point when my son, known in the book as the Emperor for obvious reasons, is experimenting with language. I become aware of how much he hears and picks up on a couple of occasion. Once when he wakes up in the morning and the first thing he says is, 'Uh-huh, thank dhu very much.' He'd been listening in on one of the first conversations my partner and I had had about the play. That was six years ago.

I should note here that having a supportive partner who will talk over ideas with you, read endless scripts, correct your swearing (I've never been good at swearing) and generally encourage you to keep going is the greatest asset any writer can have. (So thank you, Graham. Your help is always appreciated.)

Of course when I sat down and wrote the play in an afternoon I was extremely chuffed. I think it must have been the 14th or 15th version (some many years later) that I sent to Siege Perilous and was accepted. While I was working on it I completed a mentorship with the Playwrights Studio Scotland and have a great deal of help from the BBC Radio Scotland Drama Department (Thank you Kirsty!) I frequently called on the aid of the writer in residence at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and most recently attended Zinnie Harris' excellent course that led to the formation of an Edinburgh playwright group and the 10 production at the Traverse as a showcase for all our work. All this helped me develop my playwrighting skill. I needed to learn about plays and construction before I could go on to break the rules.

Suspicious Minds moves about in time and frequently broke the fourth wall (between audience and actors). Writing a play is about finding your own voice and telling a story you'd like to watch. It's utterly different from writing a novel and exercises your creativity in a very different fashion.

You can read a review of the production here.

Euphemia in Mensa

2010-03-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

The following article first appeared in March 2010 Mensa Magazine

From Tending Toddlers to Committing Murder

Caroline Dunford

October 2009 saw the release of my first crime novel, A Death in the Family: A Euphemia Martins Mystery. Previously I’d been most well known for a book I published documenting the second year in the life of my toddler (now 8). So what causes a mother writing about her challenging child to turn to crime?

It’s a good and a difficult question. It’s right up there with the perennial favourite of readers ‘how do you get your ideas?’ All writers hate that question not because they think it’s a foolish one, but if we’re honest, because we rarely know.

I can say that the traumas, heightened emotions and constant tension required of a murder mystery aren’t that different to being the main carer of a toddler (and last February I made myself another one.) But it’s really more about how I approached both topics that gives me my signature style. If some murder mysteries are best drunk with a glass of whisky by your side to fortify you against the more visceral moments, my murder mystery is best read in a comfy chair with a cup of tea and a nice biscuit. I hope on occasion my readers will be nibbling their nails nervously, but I also expect them to snort tea down their nose from laughing so hard.

It’s taken me a very long time to discover my writing style. The somewhat quirky take on life that I initially developed as a personal survival device against a constantly bemusing world turns out to be also the best way for me to tell stories. Euphemia is set in 1910 and behind the laughter and the headstrong (often naïve) antics of the eighteen year old heroine the books confront the very real differences of class, gender and the incoming storm-clouds of WW1.

The story of how Euphemia came into being is even less straight forward. I heard from a fellow writer that ePrint Publishing, previously an educational materials only publisher, was looking for writers of thrillers and mysteries for their new Read Away imprint. My sense of the market told me this was not an opportunity to be missed. I contacted them at once and asked if I could submit. I was politely told they were seeking prospective work from among their already large stable of authors. I pleaded that one had referred me and was allowed to send a chapter and synopsis, but it would need to be delivered in a matter of weeks.

I went to bed wracking my brains trying to think how I could make a science-fiction thriller appeal to a wide audience and woke up with the idea of the Euphemia Martins Mysteries – which are light historical crime stories with a nod to Agatha Christie and Jane Austen in style. My subconscious clearly has a better insight into the literary market than my waking mind.

Euphemia Martins might have been created literally over night, but she had an extremely long gestation period. She is partly inspired by my great grandmother, who came from a very wealthy family, but on falling out with her new-step mother, ran away from home and into service. And so a family legend was born.

Although I never met her as a child I loved her story. It sounded so romantic. As an adult I realized her life was more likely to have been hard and difficult, but I admired her enormously for her independent spirit in a time when women were of very little account.

My switch to crime becomes even easier to understand when you know that like most Mensans I love puzzles and I love crime novels. I’d never written one because I don’t know (or particularly want to know) a lot about either forensics or police procedure. However, in 1910 forensics were very limited and by making my investigation team a maid and the younger son of rich, but disreputable family, I’ve almost entirely side-stepped the police. My background in psychotherapy helps me create three dimensional characters and also gives me a good grounding in what will drive a person to murder.

I heard Euphemia’s voice from the first sentence of chapter one and I knew I had something special. Fortunately ePrint agreed and before book one was even completed we were talking about the series. My crime writing is now an established part of my life and the family know the tell-tale signs of when I am disappearing back into 1910. Books two and three (‘A Death in the Highlands’ and ‘A Death in the Asylum’) are scheduled for release this year and book one has just been entered into the Orange Prize.

A Death in the Family: A Euphemia Martins Mystery (ePrint Publishing) is available now in paperback (£6.99) from the publisher’s website http://www.readaway.co.uk/, http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and from all good bookstores.

How to Survive the Terrible Twos: Diary of a mother under siege (£7.99) available direct from http://www.crimsonpublishing.co.uk/, http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and from all good bookstores,

Toddling On

2010-01-20T02:27:00.000-08:00

Between 2003 and 2004 I kept a diary on the progress of my elder son's toddler years. In particular the times that are known for a good reason as The Terrible Twos. This went on to form the basis of the book How to Survive the Terrible Twos: diary of a mother under siege which was published in September 2005.

Of course no child is terrible, but all mothers discover that this particular stage of growing mobility and independence is a time when small people test boundaries to see if anything, including their parents, will break. It is also a delightful time. On the whole toddlers are great companions, endlessly amusingly, mostly deliriously happy (when not in tantrum mode) and full of the joys of life. Mortgages, school, job worries, finances etc play no part in their little worlds. The journey of a toy train around the living room is the funniest, best and most exciting thing ever and will produce endless gales of laughter. When you are able to engage in this positive tiny worldview it is extremely refreshing. The problem has always been that parents worry if they are doing the right thing and there are countless professionals on hand to tell them how to manage their child - very few of whom agree or who set unachievablely high standards.

I wrote The Terrible Twos as a mother not an expert. I wrote of all my mistakes as well as my achievements. It's funny and it's sad, but above all I hope it's hopeful and reassuring.

This morning, despite the book being five years old, I saw that another review had been added to the amazon site by a mother who had come across the book by chance and found it helpful. I know it's a very popular book in libraries and is recommended by a number of councils in their parental help section.

The child in the book is now eight and thriving. His little brother is just coming up for two. I may need to reread my own book.

Real life and fiction

2010-01-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

Fiction may be inspired by life, but it's far from playing by the same rules. Life is to fiction as a riding a penny farthing is to driving a lamborghini. It's bigger, brighter, more thrilling and you get there very much sooner.

It is most easy to see this on t.v. How many times have you seen a character sit down for a coffee or a meal only to rise again in moments as if this was perfectly normal? When in reality you know everyone in the place would be looking at them as if they were mad and their lack of nourishment would mean they would expire within a few weeks?

Characters in fiction eat fast, rarely sleep and certainly never sh- go to the toilet. A few shower, because that's apparently a very good place for them to have unique thoughts and it allows a little flesh to be shown/imaged.

And characters never travel from A to B. They depart and they arrive. The journey is only described if something happens along the way.

Coincidence is seen as lazy writing. Critics will mutter about plot threads not being woven tightly enough and the gods defend any new writer who sends material to the slush pile that can be seen as in any way baggy. And yet it's very real. If you think back over the past twenty four hours I bet you'll be able to come up with one minor coincidence and over the past month as least one major one. (Try it!)

Ironically, anti-coincidence - like my recently swapping my 4x4 for one of the most ecologically friendly cars on the planet and investing in my first decent pair of high heels for years just before the snow-storm came - would be fine to be used in a story. It would be seen as humorous and creating more obstacles for my character (which it has.)

This is what fiction is all about - characters vaulting or crashing into obstacles (literally or figuratively). In the west where life moves at an ever increasing pace, so our fiction has got faster and faster. Paragraphs are shorter on the page and scenes fleeting on the telly. I'm told people watch tv, text and surf the net at the same time. (It makes me wonder if the next stage of evolution will involve more hands.) As has been noted for some time our attention span is continually shrinking.

The golden rule in modern writing is stuff has to happen and it has to happen now! It also has to play by the rules of fictional life. These, as you will be gathering, are many, varied and illogical.

And yet all rules can be broken if you can do it in a way that shocks the reader. Shock being one of the most tantalizing enticements to bored readers. Fear and horror are very acceptable too. Although the whisper from the States is the next new vogue in publishing will be Angels as the general reader base is looking for a bit of cheering stuff. (Thank heavens)

If I try to make sense of this all the best I can offer is that when we tell someone of our day's events, we don't put in all the details. We highlight stuff and if we want to keep their attention we do our best to surprise, intrigue and perhaps even shock. We want to seem interesting and we want our fiction in the same flavor.

Work ethics and disappointment

2009-12-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

Part of the problem of having a professional blog is that you tend to try and post the worthy stuff only. This can lead to either a very dull blog or a empty blog or in the worst cases both. Mine has certainly been on the sparse side for a while.

However, I have not been inactive otherwise. As well as the all the midwinter festivities many of us are preparing for I have also started the third Euphemia Martins novel. (It will be out in October 2010). It's rolling along nicely with Euphemia, as well intentioned as ever, tumbling into one escapade after another. However, with each novel she is growing just that bit more savvy.

But the real reason I find myself writing up my blog this morning is due to my unexpected freedom. Yesterday I worked extra hard and in between many and varied necessary trips I wrote an entire draft chapter, instead of my usual half. The theory being I'd free myself up for a no writing day and go and spend the morning instead with my writerly pal Z and his daughter. We are in the same writers group and have attempted to meet up several times independently (and with toddlers) for coffee before and always been thwarted. Today the heavens opened, icy blasts rained down and there is as Z put it 'the wrath of god' falling on his side of the city.

So, we're not meeting. Panda, the toddler, is pleased as he is very sleepy. (He took ages to settle last night and due to holding a one bear party in his cot.) I can of course now knuckle down to some more work. Only I don't feel much like it. I worked hard for my treat today and I feel as disappointed as a toddler who's just learned there are no more biscuits in the jar. (Or in Panda's case no more bananas - have I said how much the bear loves bananas?) I am going to get a hot cup of tea and some croissants and watch something really bad that I taped earlier and see what I feel like. Doubtless I will do some more work today, but it will feel better if I convince myself I don't have to.

If it's cold and miserable where you are take a look at my publisher's new website. Not only is there a roaring fire, but there's even a cat on the rug. You can feel warm just looking at it!

Startled but pleased.

2009-11-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

My publisher has decided to enter A Death in the Family into the Orange Fiction prize! I am a little startled, but very pleased.

Google who?

2009-11-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

In general writers are shy folk. There will always be some who prefer to swing naked from the trees while tap-tapping on their lap-tops, but for most of us writing is a solitary exercise undertaken through the necessity of preserving our sanity. Writers are observers. We record what we experience. We take life and jumble it up with fantasy and feelings and whatever else we have lying around at the time and then we present is tentatively to the reading public. It's often quoted that writers hold up a mirror to society, but I suspect many of them, like me, are writing to try and make sense of the world around them.

There are just so many things that don't make sense from why egg-whites go into the oven gooey and come out rock hard to the evolution of the duck billed platypus; from why a strange large lorry reverses up my dead-end lane every morning to who actually recorded the 'Stand Clear Vehicle Reserving' jingle that it loudly plays. Or why do my computer and my iPhone think it's okay to offer me entirely different calendars despite being synced or why is the weather always best when there's a deadline to be completed? And then there are the serious things that essentially all come down to why on earth do people think it's okay to hurt each other?

The wonderful thing about the internet is that it is proof positive that a lot of people out there are asking the same questions and lots of people are trying to answer them. Saying the resources on the internet are big is rather like describing the universe as being a nice little collection of stars. Who runs the internet and who feeds in all this data is a bit of a mystery. Could it be a giant army of elves of which the QI elves are the only ones to formally declare themselves?

Some of the information has bylines and even photos though you can never be entirely sure that anyone you meet or read on the internet is a) real or b) exactly what they seem to be. In a similar way you can never be sure that any of the data you find is accurate.

You'd think then that the internet was a great way for us shy authors to self publicize and to some extent it is. Social media from twitter to twirl from facebook to lj all offer us a way to reach potential readers. If we put in enough time and effort we get pages of listing on google . In fact from time to time things will be picked up and posted without any action on our behalf. My reading from A Death in the Family appeared over on The Witty Sparks blog without my lifting a finger. Someone has been also posting my performed plays on a couple of websites though they rarely seem to get the list right and appear to have borrowed the photo from my blog. They also have my nationality wrong, but it's clear it's all done with the best of intentions.

Some ebook authors on the other hand have the misfortune to find their entire works downloadable for free - presumably on sites created by people who don't understand that some of us earn a living from generating content and that giving it away for free it rather like us breaking into their houses and helping ourselves to a toaster or a telly because we rather like it.

All in all this means that the internet is at heart a reflection of humanity and therefore liable to be wildly contradictory and often misleading. The one certain thing is whatever you put out there stays out there. Googling myself recently (and there's a verb I wasn't taught in school) Caroline Dunford for the first five pages of hits is entirely me. In fact it's mostly me for the first nine pages. I think this is quite impressive - try it with your own name and see what comes up.

But what's it all about?

2009-10-30T02:50:00.000-07:00

On my to-write list at present is the third in the Euphemia Martins Mysteries, the outline for my next YA and maybe that radio play that is always going to get written sometime.

I'm not the type that gets stuck for ideas. In general I have an over abundance of them. However, it often takes many years for these ideas to turn into a book. I may be creating worlds, building life stories of my characters, manipulating their relationships, but even when I can see and feel all this I have to decide what the story is about.

Great stories can usually be summed up in a couple of lines. Pride and Prejudice is exactly what it says on the cover - the story of two young lovers who have to overcome pride and prejudice. A Christmas Carol is the tale of how an old miserly man who hates Christmas is given the chance to reflect on his life and discovers a new found love of life and humanity. Rebecca is the story of how the influence and circumstances of a dead first wife almost destroys (the never named) heroine's marriage.

Each of these stories is rich in sub-text, weaves and interweaves plot, but never loses sight of what it is the core sense of the story.

One of the difficult parts of being a writer is not digressing. It might be hard to write 50,000 words, but it's much harder _not_ to write 100,000 to tell the same story. For me, it can take years to figure out what a novel or play is about, but until I have that two or three line precis I know I mustn't unleash the torrent of story I have conceived in my head. If I don't wait I end up with endless rewrites, a plot so huge it would take ten tomes to do it justice and eventually having to lose much of my hard work to create a thinner, sleeker piece. When I manage to find the patience to wait I produce my very best work and the story does that magical thing of writing itself.

A Death in the Family was one of those magical stories. Euphemia, my heroine, is loosely based on my great grandmother and as a character has been with me for most of my life. But not everything takes that long to gestate. My short play 'Breakfast After Dark' (on at the Traverse, Edinburgh on Nov 15 as part of '10') took weeks to think about, but only as long as it took to type to write. (And the director was very pleased with it.)

In essence - don't write too soon. Carry your story and let it form before trying to put anything on the page. If you're attempting to earn your living by writing then the nice idea of writing only when the muse strikes is not profitable. There will always be times when it is knowing your craft rather than divine inspiration that will get you through. Personally, I carry many stories in my head. It makes me absent-minded and distracted. I've been known to end a telephone conversation by apologizing that I need to be in 1910 now. But the brain is a wonderful thing. I can carry many stories at once. My mind works on plots for while I sleep, eat and go about my daily life. Feed your mind with experience, make small notes and stay aware of all the stories you have and hopefully one day your stories will feed you. If nothing else being so distracted gives one an excuse to be lax with the housework.

The Author as Product

2009-10-28T02:04:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time publishers used to sell books. Now, more and more they are selling personalities.

On October 1st this year eight hundred new titles were published. This stunning number is in part due to the theory that it takes most books three months to succeed or fail, so October 1st is the ideal date to start the race to be in the Christmas best seller list. (There also being this year the unspoken yet fervent hope that the credit crunch will encourage 2009 present shoppers to go for books rather than expensive techno gadgets.)

On October 10th my crime novel A Death in the Family was released into this maelstrom to fend for itself. My lovely publisher is doing all they can, but without a marketing budget into five (or even six) figures for me, like many authors, it's a struggle to be seen.

Not surprisingly with this sudden onslaught of books the ones that so far have been rising to the top are the celebrity autobiographies and novels with celebrity names on the cover. To accompany this the celebrities are out doing the signing rounds and to their fans the price of a book is a small token to pay to meet their idols - and so celebrity reads shoot up the best seller list and become the most talked about books.

This can cause a bit of consternation among more regular authors. You see, it is not uncommon for a busy celeb to outline their idea to a ghost writer, who will do the hard graft of actually writing the book. Then all the celeb has to do is ensure they read the book before they turn up at a signing, so they are familiar with what is in it. For those of us who write away in our garrets and send out our work without the backing of a tv or glamour career it can be hard to compete.

Because the sad fact is that authors are in competition with celebrity reads. You could argue they are entirely different kind of products, but they're both stacked side by side on the shelves and thus in direct competition for the buyer's hard earned cash.

Imagine Aunt Mary trying to buy a Christmas present for her teenage niece. She has to decide whether to buy what looks as if it could be a jolly good story by an author whose name seems vaguely familiar, or does she go for the glossy, picture-book autobiography of a house-hold name? Which one will produce the initial oohs and aahs of pleasure when unwrapped?

But it's not over yet. The regular authors are fighting back. Some of our stars are becoming celebrities in their own right for nothing more than writing their own books. Today, more than ever, authors are actively building their own fan bases.

We now attend more literary festivals than ever before, do more signings and put ourselves up for what was once the celebrity only territory of after dinner speeches. The days of the author-in-shady-garret are over. If you want to sell you have to convince your public. But without the wigs, make-up, push-up bras, scandalous careers, singing voice or tv career what can an author do?

They can perform. The harsh reality is authors now have to entertain not only on the page but in person. We write blogs, we join facebook, and we network like the possessed and we go to voice workshops.

Regular authors promote their work through being passionate about their story. We aim to make you fall in love with our characters as deeply as we have done ourselves. We might get our nails done or buy new shoes, but we are not inherently glamourous. All we can deliver is a passion for our craft. We aim to give you a window into our mind where our characters and ideas formed - where are heroes and heroines were first born. We are becoming performers but in quite a different way. We are the mouthpieces for our characters and the ideas and themes embedded in our work rather than for our own life-stories.

Both the celeb reads and the more mainstream authorial works are both reflections of our society. All books are mirrors of ourselves and our world whether we seek within them escapism, inspiration or understanding. And all have much to offer.

And here is me - doing my best to be author as product and reading an extract from A Death in the Family.

Writing as Craft

2009-10-15T01:31:00.001-07:00

The first novel I ever wrote was The Emperor's Men and I thought it was magnificent. It had wonderful characters, more than half of whom I was in love with. The description was vivid and new - I remember with particular fondness the Rose Petal Palace. It stood at around 60,000 words and was perfect for a debut fantasy novel. This was mumble, mumble years ago. (Let's just say while there weren't actually dinosaurs roaming the streets mobile phones were rare and heavy enough to slay a dinosaur should you actually come across one.)

What really surprised me was that no one wanted my opus. Rejection after rejection hit the doormat. Some scolded me for starting sentences with 'and'. And in that I like to think I was ahead of my time, but sadly what I was missing was my novel had a few tiny flaws.

The story jumped around all over the palace. Characters achieved great things 'off-screen' and returned to show their prizes rather than their actions. There was no coherent flow-through of story. It was essentially a series of poorly connected vignettes strung together. The characters weren't bad, but they were more in my head than on the page. There were long unnecessary pieces of dialogue added in simply because I liked 'hearing' them talk and which helped in no way progress the story. Pace was an alien planet. There was some good description, but my world was a nod to every fantasy novel there had ever been. It didn't copy anyone, but there wasn't any particularly special or startling about. (Though be to honest at the time if I had been well known enough that probably wouldn't have been a deal breaker.) But as new break out novel it had nothing going for it except to show there was a chance I might be able to write one day.

At the time self-publishing wasn't an option. It simply didn't exist except in very expensive vanity presses, which by their very name kind of gave you a clue if you were going there it was a bad idea. I'm very glad of this, because at the time I was sure enough of my work and my ability (i.e. arrogant and angry enough) that if self-publishing had been a realistic option I would have done it. If I had gone this route I would have learnt nothing about writing, my work would not have sold and I would have become the embittered sort of failed writer you find in corners of bookshops sneering at the latest top ten titles. (Although you have to admit they do sometimes have a point.)

I'm not saying self-publishing is always bad. For some people it may be the best option forward as long as their work is of a good enough standard and they are willing to embrace the engulfing necessities of marketing.

What I did and what I would encourage any writer to do is learn the craft. I already had a Eng Lit degree, so I could tell everyone else where they were going wrong even if I was totally blind to my own flaws! I trained as a journalist, learned to edit, worked as a book editor, read everything I could get my hands on and of course I wrote and wrote and wrote. I also went on to study psychology and personal narrative in psychotherapy - but even I admit that's not entirely necessary.

And I joined a writers' group.

These are always dangerous places. A group of people who tell you your work is wonderful or who tell you it is terrible are equally useless. You need people who are selfless enough to give their time and attention to your work and to offer what they feel to be constructive criticism - and then, of course, you need to learn how to listen and filter that criticism and how to give it in return. My writers' group is outstanding. I'm lucky.

I could write at length about writing groups, but a short rule of thumb is if they don't audition writers, who wish to join then it's unlikely to be worth taking part. (An audition is usually submission of a piece, followed by a crit session with the group to give and take crit.) Also if at least half the members aren't published somewhere then they're probably not on the right track

I still fall in love with characters. I still make mistakes in my writing. I still leave too much in my head rather than on the page. But I've learned a lot about the craft. Recently, a member of my group phoned me out the blue and asked my advice on which way he should take his story, saying I was rather good at that sort of thing. I won't name him, but he's well published and I remembered feeling extremely flattered that he not only asked me, but subsequently in the following draft took my advice.

I'd love to say that now I only write perfect work that needs little revising. Of course, I don't. However, I've come an awful long way from The Emperor's Men and I'm still going. Writing is far from being all imagination. A huge part of it is hard graft and a willingness to learn. Be prepared that many of your novels will fail before one is published. But with each work you complete you will learn more.

(See my previous post for an extract from the newly published A Death in the Family: A Euphemia Martins' Mystery.)

An extract from A Death in the Family

2009-10-12T01:28:00.001-07:00

This is a video I made for the Readaway Series launch in Cheshire Oaks. I'm sitting in my own library reading a short extract from the Death in the Family - and I do voices!

What an Author wants from a Book Signing

2009-10-11T02:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday I had a private party to launch A Death in the Family. It went marvelously and there will pictures in another blog. On Saturday I was due to do a book signing in Borders, Edinburgh and at the party several well known authors came up to me with their warnings. Alan Campbell said he was always afraid no-one would turn up and Ricardo Pinto had equal tales of warning. I, of course, thanked them for these insights the night before my own signing and when I got home slept badly.

Borders had done a magnificent job of advertising the event, posters everywhere and within moments of being in the store the tannoy announced my presence, my fantastic book and how delighted they were to have me. I hid under the table in the upstairs Starbucks and waited for my appointed hour to come.

It was a strange experience. I'd seen several authors do signings in the store before, so being on the other side of the table gave me a new perspective. As someone who buys a great many books and will often go to signings I thought I'd offer up my new found insight from what an author wants from a signing.

They want people to come. They don't mind if you slip into a seat halfway through a reading - in fact they'd rather that than you bashfully hiding just on the peripheral of their vision. They don't even care if you're intending to buy the book and just want to sit down and rest your weary feet. It's so much nicer to read to faces than empty chairs. Oh, and they appreciate it enormously when you laugh at the comic moments. If you sit down at a reading there is no obligation to buy a book. Even if an author entertains you for a minute that makes them happy. Yes, we write to make a living (or try to), but we also write to entertain.

The audiences I had were lovely and laughed in the right places, but I'm told I had several people lingering behind the speakers in stationary, listening but wary of coming forward.

And then I moved to the signing table. This a device that can make any author look like and feel like a salesperson for an unpopular house fixture. It's truly amazing the number of people who walked into the shop intending to turn left, met my eyes, smiled in a rabbit sees fox sort of a way and shot off to the right.

So here's what an author wants when they're sitting at a signing table. They want you to come over and have a look. No author, with the possible exception of Derren Brown, has the ability to make you buy their book (and I'm sure he wouldn't even if he could). If you touch a book on the table, even if you read the back of it, armed guards will not spring out from under the table and forcibly escort you to the cash desk. The author won't take a penny from you - only the cash desk can do that and you have to voluntarily walk up to it carrying the book.

You see the thing is while any author is chuffed to bits when you like their work they do understand no everyone likes the same sort of stuff. None of us will cry, moan or writhe on the ground if you pick up a book and put it back. Honestly. You will get a very cheery smile if you buy one, but that's a bonus.

The weird thing about a signing table is the more people cluster around it the more that come over. And the more that come over the higher the chance it will be someone's sort of thing. So really, just by coming over to have a look you're doing us a favour.

Having said all this I must also say everyone who came up to my table, including those who didn't buy, were lovely and I was grateful to everyone of you. Perhaps, slightly more grateful to those that bought the book, but I think I hid that well. I achieved respectable sales and I hope everyone who bought the book thoroughly enjoys it.

A Death the Family remains in the buy one get one half price scheme this weekend at Borders Edinburgh. And now the books are all on their own without a scary author, they're probably lonely. If you live nearby you could help them with that!

Writing versus welding

2009-10-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

My car just failed its MOT in a it'll-need-welding-for-that sort of a way.

I can pretend it's cool to the kind of writer who drives a car with wing-mirrors held in place with black duct-tape. It means I'm a rebel with style. Well no, it's means I'm a writer and getting the wing-mirrors fixed when they've been broken by wanton vandalism ranks lower than getting the new tyres, or the wielding, done.

So after crowing about how easy it is to make my deadlines, I'm going to spend a lot of time tomorrow running between welders and garages - if they will give me appointments - to try and get the car fixed.

But how lucky you are, I hear many of you cry. I'm stuck in the office all day and I can never be home to see the repairman/go to the garage/run out for the mother in law's forgotten birthday present. Well, no, you can't. But then all the time you're sitting in your wee office you expect Mr/Ms Boss to be putting money into your bank account. I don't deliver I don't get money.

And here's one of the essential conundrums of being a writer, if you're working from home you end up dealing with all the home stuff and while you're dealing with the home stuff you're not earning the money to pay for it. Now, my partner doesn't drive, so I couldn't ask him to do the running around with the car, but even if I did his employer wouldn't let him out. The employer would argue, quite rightly, that he's paid to be within the office walls alleviating the sobs of people whose tech has just broken down in office hours.

However, try as I might to argue with the garage that they need to stay open late to let me do a full day's writing before having to dash out and pick the car up, they don't agree. I have the same trouble with the Emperor's school. All these places are so fixated on working only the hours between nine and five/three. Of course, everyone who has ever tried to get a dentist appointment or get to the store before they sell out of shoes/milk/the-latest-must-have-MacGuffin-that-their-kid-absolutely-must-have-or-the-universe-will end knows the feeling of frustration, but throw in the parenting and the self-employed aspects of being a writing Mum and boy - there are times when I feel like hitting my head off the table for half and hour just so I can feel the relief when I stop.

It's this kind of juggling that sees me writing at my desk when everyone else in the world is enjoying a post-prandial glass of something special.

It is, of course, my own fault for choosing such a deliciously precarious career, but next time you go round to a struggling writer's house and see they haven't hoovered for three weeks cut them a break and make them a cup of tea for once. Better yet, bring a bottle of wine with you and a spare cup of time.

Book Party

2009-10-03T03:47:00.000-07:00

Here's hoping Eprint's party at Borders in Cheshire Oaks went down a storm today. This was the major launch for the Readaway series of which A Death in the Family is part and four Readaway authors were present. Hopefully there was much fun and merriment. As I couldn't be there I sent down a film of me reading part of my novel and I believe the plan was to put it up on a big screen. Rather a funny feeling to think lots of people were sitting watching me read while I was in the hairdresser.

I had intended to post this earlier in the day in case any of your down south were reading this, but as some of you will have noticed the blog came up empty. For reasons known only to itself my portable device of the moment decided I was only allowed to post a title and tags. The actual body of the blog would not load. But hopefully it will went swimmingly and there will be photos aplenty.

My own north of the border book launch will happen a week today at 1pm in Edinburgh's Borders. All welcome. It's a big store and I might get a bit lonely if you don't come.

Book Launch

2009-10-02T04:52:00.000-07:00

Borders in Edinburgh are hosting my book launch for A Death in the Family on Sunday 10th October.

Details up on the Borders Website.

Many more details on the wonderful City of Literature website.

Also on Oracle here.

Writers don't get sick. We get busier.

2009-10-02T04:20:00.001-07:00

Many years ago when I was in one of the many phases when I was looking to take on an outside job to support my writing addiction I was asked in an interview how many days sick I took in a year.

I think even then it was a dodgy question, but at the time I didn't blink. I looked the interviewer straight in the eye and said, 'I'm self-employed. I don't get to be sick.' Needless to say I got the job, which I stayed in for eighteen months until it became clear that although I frequently found myself in situations stranger than fiction I didn't have the time or energy to create any, so I left to go back to my real job.

Today, although the children frequently try to challenge this I write full time. I may not work office hours, but generally I put in more time during the week than I would do if I was a wage-slave. I have, as they worryingly keep saying on the news, underlying health issues, but I work around these. However, last week I discovered I am not proof against parent targeted viruses.

The Panda, now eighteen months, and occasionally condescending to grace a local creche with his presence, has gone into that phase that all parents dread when he is catching every cold and illness known to mankind in a self-determined programme to build his immune system. Everything he catches he bounces back from - he is the original Bounce Back Bear, but everything he catches he also generously passes on to me. And last week he gave me gastroenteritis of a form and a variety that would be classified by the censors as too terrible for viewing even in the worst of horror movies. Not, you understand, that he had it that badly, that was me. I don't think my head actually turned through 360 degrees, but I can't be sure.

So for the first time in forever I've taken a week off. A week because once I succumbed to this illness several others, who had been waiting for me weaken, leapt upon me like a lion on straggler of the pack.

But writers, like any self-employed person, can't get sick. It's not in the job description.

But I'd been working too hard and once down I was out for the count. What has really startled me is coming back to my desk today is to find that I can still make all my deadlines. It seems some skills once learned are never lost.

In the almost forgotten past when there were no mobile phones, I was a commissioning journalist and it seems that the art of defining deadlines has stayed with me. I'll let you in on my secret.

I quote long and deliver early.

I also, like most writers, work very hard. My long deadlines are often seen as short by editors.

Nothing short of total incapacity will stop me from delivering. I was still doing business emails from my bed on my iphone despite an inability to lift my head off the pillow.

So coming back to my desk today I have lots to do, but akin to the refrain of Panda's current favourite tv show I will be managing to get the job done.

But what is A Death in the Family about?

2009-09-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

In December 1909 the Reverend Joshia Martins expires in a dish of mutton and onions leaving his family on the brink of destitution. Abandoned by her noble grandfather, Joshia's daughter, the eighteen year old Euphemia, takes it on herself to provide for her mother and little brother by entering service. She's young, fit, intelligent, a little naive and assumes the life of a maid won't be too demanding. However, on her first day at the unhappy home of Lord Stapleford she discovers a murdered body.
Euphemia's innate sense of justice has her prying where no servant should look and uncovering some of the darker social, political and business secrets of Stapleford family. All she has to defend herself is her quick wits, sense of humour and the ultimate weapon of all virtuous young women, her scream.

Cover for A Death in the Family

2009-09-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Crime Launch nears

2009-09-12T02:11:00.000-07:00

A Death in the family officially exists - it's on amazon, available for pre-order now!

The Purpose of a Synopsis

2009-09-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

Hands up anyone who enjoys writing a synopsis?

No hands in the room?

Hands up those who believe a synopsis is something you write immediately before you submit your completed manuscript to an agent or publisher?

Sadly, I suspect there are now a lot of hands in the air. Here's the thing, you do need to send a short, snappy and evocative synopsis with your submission - especially if you're hoping to rise to the top of the slush pile, but this synopsis should be a synopsis of your much longer structural synopsis.

And if you're anything like me you're groaning at the idea of yet more synopsis. But here's the thing, being a successful writer is hard work. You may have written your first draft in a state of almost euphoric imaginative outpouring, but if you did, unless you're luckier than the average lottery winner, it's going to need substantial tidying.

There are many ways of using synopsis to improve your writing. I'm going to give you two examples of how I use them and that reflect two very different ways of working. One is much less painful than the other.

When I'm writing the Euphemia Martins Mysteries (launched in October!!!!!) I spend a lot of time thinking about my next idea and the themes I want to weave in. I have a short overarching synopsis that covers the entire series and first of all I need to pinpoint where this story falls on the series arch. Then I write the first chapter to get a feel for the book. I know even at this point that the first chapter will be rewritten and tightened several times, but it gives me the sense of the book. I then, before writing any more chapters, go on to write a detailed structural synopsis. By this I mean a break down of each major scene. When I finally come to write the book I always know exactly where I am going. I may find when writing I need to include a small extra linking scene here and there, but generally I'm sticking to the original structural synopsis. That first draft will need some rework, but not that much. I've already ironed out much of the issues in the original synopsis.

With the young adult (YA) novel I've been writing for my Scottish Book Trust mentorship I gave myself much more work. I wrote the better part of the book, pausing two thirds of the way through to pull together a synopsis, much of which was based on what I had already written. This was always intended as a rough first draft. What I wanted was a body of prose to work with during the mentorship. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.) I've now rewritten the book several times. The second time through was to expound on a lot of the world building ideas I had in my head rather than on the page. Before the third time through I rewrote a long structural synopsis to pull the story into better shape and then followed this with another draft. I have just completed what I hope will be the last, and very long, structural synopsis that weaves various scenes in and out to (again I hope) create a fast paced story in a world that is complex, fantastic and full of peril.

In both cases I've used the synopsis to get the book under control and decide what it was about rather than to sell it.

The Euphemia Martins' stories are set in this world shortly before WWI. In these I have to track the on-going journey of several continuing characters and ensure the parts of my crime slot together well and clues are scattered throughout the novel at an appropriate rate. But here I'm working in a setting that is familiar to most of my readers and also using the tight, tight structure of crime. My use of synopsis limits the number of rewrites I need and ensures right from the start I know I'm on the right track.

In the YA I've written directly from my imagination and paid the price in extra work. But here, I'm not sure I could have done it any other way. I have to allow the rules of my world to filter through as I am showing the story. There is a lot of new information - a reader needs to know everything from how many suns there are in the sky to why the world is in peril - there is little assumed knowledge. To allow the reader to engage with this new world in an entertaining, rather than confusing, manner, as well as ensure the usual plot elements (characterization, character journey, pacing, etc) I have to weave in scenes that show how this new and strange universe works. I also have to anticipate the reader - for example I have to show their are two suns before the reader assumes there is one. Using a structural synopsis allows me to ensure the building blocks of the story all stack up to a complete and exciting story.

I'm pretty sure some of you are thinking this all all very well, but that in your case your novel means you don't need to do a structural synopsis.

Okay, there have been some amazing stream of consciousness writers (like Kerouac and Joyce), and they may appear to be the exceptions to the rule. However, even these seemingly roving tales have an inherent structure when you break them done.

Loose writing doesn't find much favour in today's world of busy, stressed readers, who snatch their reading time between the ever increasing demands of modern life. You can't risk losing their attention for a moment or before you know it your book is doing it's bit for the planet in the recycle bin.

So, no, I don't think any of you can get away without working your way through at least one structural synopsis. At least when you've done it you have something to synopsis your submission synopsis from.

Go on, you never know you might enjoy it. Your readers certainly will appreciate your efforts.

You are what you read

2009-08-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

Today I am resisting the temptation to launch into either the third Euphemia Martins novel (intriguingly entitled A Death in the Asylum) or the redrafting of the synopsis of the YA novel before the final/penultimate redraft.* Today I am going to read.

Authors need to read. Not only to understand what is selling, but because what you like to read is often a strong indicator of what you would be good at writing. This should be a really obvious point, but an awful lots of authors miss this. An awful lot of seemingly intelligent authors - like me.

My writing group, which is also another topic in itself, had seen many many of my ideas walk in only to later fall upon their sword. Generally the reaction to my pieces went along one of these lines

Half the members liked it. Half hated it.
A few loved it. The rest were indifferent.
Many had used it to help them fall asleep, but one member was eager to deconstruct my story structure at wearisome length.
Everyone quite liked it, but agreed no one would ever publish it.
Nobody minded it much. One or two had used their copies to mop up cat sick.
Almost everyone was keen except one member who pointed out some terrible flaw(s) and then the rest turned against it as a mob and tore it to pieces

There were quite a few other permutations, but you get the general idea. Before I launch into the next paragraph you need to know that my group is essentially a Science Fiction and Fantasy writing group.

Which is why when I brought them a crime proposal I felt I was really chancing my arm. I remember coming in, sitting down and studying their little faces to gain some clue as to how terminal my critical evaluation would be. In their defense I have to say this is an absolutely excellent writing group and as such we pull no punches.

It was then history was made as one reader after another said (and I couldn't help feeling they said it with some surprise) that this was actually rather good. I waited for the voice of doom that would turn the tide once more away from me - and it didn't come.

I love reading crime novels, but it had never occurred to me to write one. Today I sit here with the third, already commissioned novel, of the Euphemia Martins mystery knocking at the back of my mind, but today I am going to read. Who knows what I will learn about myself today?

*There will be a later post explaining all the fascinating ins and out of dealing with WIP (Work(s) in progress.)

Audio Story

2009-08-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

Pearls Before Swine is one of Sniplits featured audio stories this week. You can download it for a mere 98 cents. It's a lyrical science fiction piece - and you don't hear those too often. Find it here.

Writing is a terrible business

2009-08-27T04:54:00.001-07:00

I've just finished my stint for this year at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I was speaking about creativity, rejection, writing groups, and blogging. As usual I met some wonderful people, both published, unpublished and those who have no desire to be published. And as usual it's left me thinking about how those of us in, and wanting to join, this absurd way of earning a living deal with the many facetted aspects of writing.

Yesterday I ran my workshop on Dealing with Rejection. This is the third time I've run it there. It always sells out and I'm taking it as a good sign that I don't see the same faces year in and year out.

I was fortunate to have a great mix of attendees, who had clearly been thinking about dealing with rejection. A couple had yet to send their completed manuscripts off, preferring to research rejection beforehand. This might strike some as being overly pessimistic, but in reality it is one of the steps in becoming a professional writer.

Rejection is information - if you know how to read it. It's certainly a side-effect of writing, but it's one we can all learn from. Targeting, presentation, timeliness and manners help limit it, but everyone will be rejected at some stage in their career. It's all about how you use that rejection. For example, do not as one editor told me happened to her, send your spouse down to the publisher's office to make them see sense!

Rejection has a huge emotional impact that authors must not under rate. It is not something to be skipped over. It has to be approached with a clear understanding of how to cope emotionally, interpret criticism and how to move forward - and even on occasion when to gracefully retire a project in favor of something new.

Everything stems from keeping the fires of our creativity alive. The other workshop I ran this year was on doing just this. Unlike Dealing with Rejection, this one was composed solely of women,which makes me wonder why. Do women feel a particular connection with creativity? Is it not a word or term or idea that men do not connect with so easily? Is it seen as feminine? I found it really interesting I had many men, who were prepared to face the issue of rejection, but seemingly not of inspiring creativity. But then it's dangerous to ascribe gender issues to what may be more to do with who got through on the phone to the box office first.

I found my creativity aspirants to be extremely interested, willing and active participants. We ran through a series of exercises from facing that blank page, to engaging all the senses, evoking emotion, how to use your life as fuel for your creativity to tapping into the unconscious mind.

What I love about workshops is not merely seeing happy faces at the end, but getting the energy going during the talk and seeing hope and encouragement blossom in attendees. Writing is a terrible business. It is so difficult to get published. (Don't let anyone tell you otherwise). You need a degree of talent (not as much as you might suppose!), luck, a willingness to jump at opportunity, the ability to listen and use criticism and above all persistency. Quite frankly, at the end of the day you need to be a little mad. Writing has to be a compulsion rather than a hobby - but it needs to be a compulsion you learn to control and direct.

Festivals, workshops, writing groups all are wonderful opportunities for us scribblers to mix with our own kind and whether we're leading or attending a workshop it's a guarantee that all of us with learn from each other.

Proof-reading

2009-08-21T04:12:00.001-07:00

And already, despite checking over my notes several times and asking someone else to do so too, I see errors in my last post.

See, that's the good thing about working for a newspaper or a publisher, you get an editor. When you're blogging it's only you - and the cat/toddler/dog/potplant. None of whom, in my experience, can spell for toffee and as for grammar, they think that's someone who comes round for tea.

Blogging Masterclass Notes

2009-08-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

Notes from my section of The Master Class on Blogging at the Edinburgh International Book Festival August 2009

Caroline Dunford

1. Why I blog and my publishing experience

- I started blogging on LiveJournal when encouraged by a friend because I was working from home and somewhat isolated. I’ve been blogging for seven years.

- I then started using it as a warm up exercise for the day

- within a few months I had chosen to lock my journal so that only people I allowed could see it. These didn’t have to be people I knew in real life, but they were likely to be ones who knew people I knew or who were interested in similar things via a community –lj has community blogs where you can discuss common interests

-through LJ I found my local writers group, kept in touch with my friends and got involved in my first voice acting job.

- I also got a lot of feedback from my readers about how much they enjoyed my tales of my two year olds antics.

- because of this I took it to a publisher, who had previously published diaries (not blogs) and asked it they would be interested? Because the blog was locked and not public they were happy for me to include parts of my journal and even to use it as way of locating key readers, a form of viral marketing. However, they decided it had to be more than the blog, and so I incorporated a number of fact panels – about 40-60 split.

- it’s still selling. How to Survive the Terrible Twos: diary of a mother under Siege It has also been published in Italian and last week the Spanish rights were sold.

2. Blogs and their purpose

- is this a blog you hope will become a book? If so then it has to contain a journey, some kind of story arc. It has to be no less entertaining than an ordinary book. There needs to be a sense of progress – most blogs won’t make books. Everyone is writing a book – even their cats are writing and some of the cats are doing better than their owners.

- are you doing primarily for fun and you’d be happy if people read it?

- are you seeking writing validation?

- is it to publicise your work? (You lose first publishing rights if it is open on the net.) Blogging about your progress can help gather you an audience. There is a possibility of making a grass roots connection with your potential fanbase.

- Are you trying to raise your own profile (as a writer, politician, campaigner, etc)

- are you blogging for a cause?

- is it about social networking?

Whichever you choose it affects your writing style, but not the amount of time someone will read – generally you’re only getting their attention for a couple of minutes. This means you need to be more tabloid than academic journal!

- choice of platform, many options: Google’s own Blogger is very easy to start with, lots of handholding and it’s free. www.blogspot.com. Wordpress can give you more options, but it can also be more complicated. LiveJournal and Dreamwidth lend themselves to closed rather than public journals. Facebook, MySpace and Bebo tend to have the blog as a tiny part of a very busy screen and are more social networking sites.

But with all of these be wary of following the shiny. Better to choose and stick with a platform.

3. Psychological aspects of blogging (exposure, over familiarity from strangers, keeping private life in its place) Most people are nice, but

- keep personal details, children’s names, physical location out of it.

- you will always offend someone – there are so many people out there. Don’t take it personally.

- it offers an illusion. People will think they really know you. On occasion even that you are friends.

- whatever you put out there stays – don’t write in anger or when you overemotional in any way. Even if you delete it, someone somewhere will have seen it and the more you regret what you wrote the more it will be noticed! Google are continually capturing content on the net and the chances are it will be in a cache that someone with a little know-how can access.

4. Becoming an unpaid journalist

- http://writeforward.blogspot.com last updated 18^th April until recently!

– although LJ is updated every week.

- blogging can be compulsive.

- do you find yourself constantly checking for comments – get them emailed to you!

- when you discover your journal is being read then it’s tempting to write more, and expand on whatever is proving popular. This is fine as long as you have time. Regular blogging that fits around your work schedule

- blogging is a very useful tool and other than advertising (which Helen will speak about) it doesn’t pay the bills. Has to be on top of work rather than instead of. Personally I dislike blogs with advertising on them and won’t read one that is plastered with adverts.

5. Twitter – also known as microblogging

- If you haven’t gone to www.twitter.com then do so.

- It’s much quicker to write 140 characters and less of a drain on your time.

- You can feed it through your blog

- keeps things active

- also writing in 140 characters forces you to be concise and salient – no space for waffling or ranting.

but

- can be very compulsive

- can be easier to let personal details out in short thoughts without realizing.

- good idea to have more than one accounts ie one that is for genuine friends and one that is blog associated.

6. Google Analytics, keywords

- sign up on Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analysis. All you need to do is paste a given segment of code into your blog page once and it does all the statistics for you.

- use Google Analytics to check your blog’s effectiveness, but don’t get too caught up in it. There is so much information there it probably includes the building blocks of the universe!

- Google also allows you to very easily set up an RSS feed (Really Simply Syndication, which means someone can register to have your blog feed through an aggregator (a tool for capturing chosen blogs) rather than having to hunt for your blog individually.

- pingoat – helps get your site noticed. Each time you blog you can go to www.pingoat.com and feed in your blog name, url, xml (rss feed) and select which services you want pingoat to target. (If you do this too frequently pingoat may suggest you try again later.)

Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publishes them. Esssentially it lets a variety of services know you’ve updated and they automatically check on keywords, topics etc and feed this to various sites or particular interest services.

- be immediate if a current hot topic is relevant. Don’t do something like “I haven’t got Swine Flu but I do have chocolate” to get the swine flu hits. It will annoy people.

- you want to be found to be trustworthy and reliable. Regular communication in a clearly defined area, so people know what it’s worth their while to take time out of their day and read you. Loyalty and following.

Things I didn’t say due to time, but are important!

- when you’re writing a blog treat each entry like a newspaper article. This means write top- down. All the most important information (who, what, where, when and how) should be in your opening paragraph. By all means finish in a neat and clever way, but be aware that people will only scan the opening to see if they are interested. Anything really important or revelatory should be in the top section of your piece.

- be aware that posting in the public domain opens you up to the laws of defamation (Scotland) and libel/slander (rest of UK) and whatever other laws of insult there are worldwide. Don’t be rude or insulting unless you’re prepared to go to court. Personal opinion, personal worldview and verifiable facts to lesser and greater extents are legal defenses, but it’s complicated and unless you’re campaigning and have some kind of legal support think about the ramifications of what you’re writing. Remember even paper journalists must do this. We have freedom of speech, but also there are rights within law to protect reputations for good reason.

- Proof-read your work before posting!

Life after blogging

2009-08-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

Today I'm at the Edinburgh International Book Festival talking about blogging. Although I regularly write on my live-journal account this account has been rather quiet of late.

How to Survive the Terrible Twos: Diary of a Mother under Siege came out of my live journal account and is still selling. In fact only this week I've heard that Spanish rights are in the pipeline.

But this journal has been somewhat neglected. I'll be talking about that and why that is. The short version is that I ended up spending so much time researching and writing about ebooks that I realized my own work was suffering.

Since the posts here have slowed I've been doing what I'm meant to be doing. By Feb 2010 I will have delivered four books and two plays since Jan 2009 as well as doing my best to actively support my publishers publicity campaigns, doing workshops and becoming Hon Sec for the Society of Authors in Scotland.

I am intending on coming back to this blog. It is, after all, my professional site. But it's only now that I'm learning how to balance blogging and real work. That's a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today.

As an experiment, if you come to my talk today, and then come here - please leave a comment.

I'm back and so are ebooks...

2009-04-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

It's quite horrific to realize I haven't been here since Christmas. But then that's always the problem with following a writer's blog; we do occasionally go off and write stuff - like proper stuff, books and things.

Anyway I'm back.

Let's start with a little game. I've over at Books from Scotland blogging about E-books and digital watermarking, how ebooks were around in the 90s and how ebooks are lighter than real books. This piece was proof-read by three people and we still missed stuff. It's an interesting article, and even more fun if you like proving to yourself you're better than any proof-reader. Have a look here.

Christmas Giveaway!

2008-12-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Lyrical Press is giving away free my magical Christmas story "A Christmas Star." To claim your copy in pdf file email promotions@lyricalpress.com. In the subject line put Request for A Christmas Star by Caroline Dunford and within a very short space of time my story will be winging its way to you as a little extra to read under the tree. Please also drop by Lyrical to read the associated blog post (It's under the blog title Lyrical Press Holiday Giveaway Story 5) and drop a comment - but most importantly remember to request your copy of the story by email now. It's only free for a couple of days!

Have a wonderful holiday everyone. Be safe and Be kind!

Very Short Play

2008-12-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

Just heard a short piece of mine "Obsession" will be being read at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh at Words, Words, Words on Monday 8th December at 8pm.

The event is free, in a bar and my piece is only a few minutes long. So really, if you're local there is very little reason not to attend!

Breathing Space

2008-12-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

I have a new super-power. I am able to make others turn green. My ability manifests with the words, "I'm taking December off."

No-one has been quite foolish enough to suggest "this writing lark is obviously a bit of a breeze'. But then they don't need to. It's written all over their faces. Other writers exhibit a much paler shade of a similar hue. But there reaction is usually along the lines of 'I wish I could get my schedule into that kind of order."

The thing is that for the last far too many months I have been writing in the overlap of son no 1 attending school and son no 2 sleeping. I have been writing late into the evening. I have been writing every weekend. I have notched up no less than three thousand words a day and in one memorable weekend sixteen thousand words. Really, I'm ready for a rest.

The harsh reality is that writing very rarely brings rewards equal to effort; no matter how talented you are. Essentially, you have to have something loose in your head to write professionally. You need to be driven enough that you do not mind that the creation of work will literally consume your life and will often yield less reward than a below average national wage. You need to be mad.

Of course all writers hope that the next book will be the one that is the best seller, that buys them the castle in the country and the gin palace - or perhaps, and this is a bit beyond the bounds of credibility, earns out enough to pay next year's heating bills. I don't think I have ever met a writer who doesn't have hope that their work will be internationally recognized and their lifestyle immeasurably altered by their work. Because, you know, writers work ridiculously hard.

Okay, so we're not doing manual labour. Currently the only active part of me other than my brain is my very busy fingers. But the hours and the level of organization and concentration required are quite extraordinary. If you don't believe me, try it.

But the real rub is this: if you do it for the money you will never succeed. If you do it because you can't help yourself, because you have to write or you will lose all grip on reality, then you a small chance of success... although to be honest you've still got a better chance of getting rich by buying a lottery ticket.

But even to a writer as obsessive as myself there must be things of more importance than writing. If there is nothing else than humanity vanishes in a puff of a word checker and prose becomes as inspiring as lettuce left at the back of the fridge for a week.

Anyway, as I used to write in my university essays, taking all the above into consideration my conclusion is that while I am mad, while I am driven to write, while I will never stop writing no matter who does or does not publish me, I have earned the right to take December off. Above all I need to take the month off because I owe it to others even more than to myself.

It's No 2's first Christmas. No 2 has had a rocky start. He's been hospitalized a couple of times already in his short life and we've been very, very scared for him. But now he's doing brilliantly, thriving and wanting his Mama. And you know, that's one thing that will stop me writing. I might push on writing despite my own health issues, but my family, partner and my sons, are my centre, my support, my inspiration and the very heart of me. Everything I am springs from them and this Christmas is theirs.

Second Review for Make Me One with Everything

2008-11-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

"Ms Dunford takes you on a twisted and complex ride through the mind of Penny Roberts. A journey that is emotionally and literarily captivating for her readers." Lototy, Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance. Reviewer for Karen Find Out About New Books.

Full review here.

First Review for Make Me One with Everything

2008-11-30T06:22:00.000-08:00

"Readers looking for a well-written story that requires more than a little thought to read will enjoy Make Me One With Everything immensely". Reviewed by Whitney at Fallen Angel Review. Rated five Angels. Full review here.

Royalties again

2008-11-26T01:20:00.001-08:00

I've been watching the news of the art world go by and to be honest it feels like a lot of the same old waltz of argument and counter argument. But as the dance is moving particularly fast today I thought I'd update you on the old issues

- Copyright

The ever thorny issue of how long can artists of any form make money out of their work has been raised today by musicians. The BBC reports 38,000 musicians are petitioning Gordon Brown for a change in copyright law. Their argument is that they contribute vitally to the export industry and the government is not recognizing this. Phil Pickett, from the 80s band Culture Club is quoted as saying 90% musicians earn less than £15,000 a year from royalties. As the majority of authors earn more like £5,000 a year I confess I could feel my sympathy slipping at this point. However...

Composers and authors currently retain copyright until 70 years after their death (who says you can't take it with you when you go?) while performers' copyright expires after fifty years. So if you made your money recording in the 60s things might be starting to look a little thin now regardless of your sales.

It raises the whole question about paying those who entertain in any form. A writer labors long and hard to create their work, but a performer is gaining royalties from recording the work of another. However, they are still employing their talent and their training and effect to reach their level of success will have been considerable.

Effectively we're asking when does it become reasonable to pay someone royalties, as opposed to a flat fee, for their work? For example should an architect get a proportion of rent or entrance fees on a building he designed? If you've trained long and hard to get to the level where you produce something that people generally enjoy, use and pay towards when is it fair to ask for a royalty? How about a surgeon, who saves your life, are they entitled to a proportion of your income for life? It's so easy to push at the boundaries of this issue and extend it far beyond reason.

I'm an author. I believe in royalties. Okay, there's a small part of me that sort of fancies the old days when a patron kept giving you chunks of money so you could peruse your art and you didn't have to worry about pleasing the general rabble - er - sorry, the great public. But even then your livelihood depending on continuing to please your audience.

Or is it about risk? I could, theoretically, become a wage slave at some institution or another. Or I can continue striving for that bright and elusive star, a best selling novel. Are royalties my reward for taking that leap of faith?

All this comes at a time when the draft European Copyright Term Directive is under debate. Under this performers and producers would have their copyright extended from 50 to 95 years after release.

I'll confess anything with Draft and European in it makes me want to run away and hide under the duvet. By the nature of the beast you just know it's going to be long, complicated and written by a committee - and while writing by committee seems to work well for some television shows that's about as far as it goes.

But we should pay attention. How we reward people in society for their efforts in all areas requires our attention. There are already, to my mind, some grossly unfair accepted ways of rewarding professionals.

And art - art is the heart beat of a people. It reflects and exposes as much as it entertains. Art in all forms represents the spirit of a nation. It can inspire, lift moods and generally remind us of our own humanity or lack of it. In these darker days books, music, art, film will become personal weapons against the demoralizing times of the credit crunch.

I can feel this is about to turn into an argument for why we need the arts at all, so I'll stop here. Please pay attention to the copyright arguments and make your opinion heard. If you don't you may find vast pool of artistic talent and associated products we have in the UK rapidly diminishing before your eyes as current and future generations opt for financially safe occupations rather than artistic ones.

Guesting

2008-11-13T06:05:00.001-08:00

Guesting today at the Lyrical Press Blog and talking about branding.

Writing, launching and going naked again

2008-11-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been away for a while. Sadly not in Hawaii or any other luxury leisure resort but in places of my own imagining.

These are fun too. Although recently on my current work in progress I've been battling with two characters who insist on running away to sea at the least opportunity. I don't sail - or at least I don't sail either well or willingly. This requires me to do a lot of research on how boats work and how those flappy things were rigged through the ages. These two characters also have a propensity for heading into storms, which means I spend a lot of my time thinking about it feels, tastes, smells, sounds and looks like being in endless sheets of rain. As I live in Scotland it's not particularly hard to imagine, but I do keep getting up to turn up the central heating. Who says imagination can't affect body temperature?

Spending so much time mining for stories is not unlike mining for gems. As I shift through the sands of my imagination I'm never entirely sure how the raw materials I find are going to turn out. I cut and polish as best I can and eventually put them out on display. It's only then I discover if my idea of what makes a good story matches anyone else's. As a lot of writers before me have said offering up a story is rather like going naked - any of my stories gives you a window into my mind.

So if you want a peek then....

On Monday 3rd November the e-book version of my novel Make Me One with Everything is released. This is a romantic thriller set in contemporary Edinburgh. You will be able to buy it here at Lyrical Press's Once Upon a Time Bookstore. Remember it's released Nov 3rd EST. You can read an except here. And see the stunning cover art work here. At $5.50 it's a snip especially if you live in the UK! However, if e-books aren't your thing you'll be able to buy the print version from May 4th 2009.

Books up. Authors Down.

2008-10-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

Credit crunch. Recession. Global Economic Collapse. What people need in times like this is good, cheap, entertainment. Don't go down the pub. Don't go to the cinema. Buy a book. It's cheaper and will give you hours more entertainment. If you're worried about becoming a loner start a bookclub - people may even bring you biscuits.

So is this going to be a boom time for the generally downtrodden profession of writers? (Bearing in mind most UK writers currently make around £5,000 a year) Even the publishers, generally the strictest of disciples of the doom and gloom philosophy, are being mildly hopeful. They predict a rise in sales for crime, thrillers and books that tell you how to do things more cheaply - this millennium's making do and mend. Who knows they may even be digging out those old hippy books from the 70s that told you have to grow cress on your windowsill and stressed the importance of sharing baths. In fact books are so very much the next greatest thing they can even make obese children thin. Sure there's the odd shaky fear that EUK, the entertainment dominant wholesaler, parented by Woolworths might be on a bit of a sticky wicket and that might adversely affect Christmas stock. But then Sir Sugar's just stepped in and scooped up 4% of Woolworths and anyone who's seen the BBC's reality show The Apprentice won't be worrying.

But if you look a little closer it's not such good news for writers.

Lulu one of the champions of the little people (I mean individual authors not fairies) despite protesting its future is bright has cut a quarter of its employees. Could it be co-incidence that at the same time that publishing giant Amazon launches POD (print on demand)? Now, we all love amazon. It lets us search inside books, offers package deals, gets stuff to us quickly (for a small fee) and while you can't buy milk at the website you can pretty much buy anything else. What most people who buy from Amazon don't realize is that they take a hearty whack of the sales price. Even in the little, growing, hopeful future of ebooks Sony are taking a huge 50% of the sale price of any book bought to download for their ereader. Publishers have no choice but to cut royalites accordingly or lose money on stock - and eventually go bust.

Much as happened in the music industry everyone is taking such a big slice of the pie that the people who actually created the material are seeing an increasing diminishing return for their efforts.

While it's a nice, radical idea to say let's cut out the middle man and (to misquote) self-publish and be damned, the sad fact is self-publication rarely leads to success. (Remember what I was saying about the good, the great, the worthy Lulu above?). But why doesn't it work? It doesn't work because when faced with several thousand single voices shouting for sales your average member of the buying British public (myself included) opts to spend our hard earned pennies with people with we think we can trust to provide the kind of goods we're looking for - in short we go with globally known distributors like Amazon and publishers whose names we learned in our cradles. Sure some independent stuff might be cheaper, but it might also be rubbish and we won't know until we've spent our cash.

What we need is for someone to come along and help with the overwhelming choice of available books - whether that's going to the 3 for 2 section at Borders (where your last free throw is a risk taker) or whether it's doing some radically different.

It would also be good if we could find something that let authors get a decent royalty and stand a chance of making the week's garret rent.

There was another industry that had much the same problem. The music industry. Apple's itunes have on a number of occasions preventing the major music labels from upping their share of the ante.

It's not a perfect answer for the book world, but we need something and we need it now or your average author is going to become the archetypal starving artist in the very near future.

Hannu - voice of the future

2008-10-06T08:22:00.001-07:00

I'm very happy to inform you that yet another member of the East Coast Writers Group (to which I belong) has made it big. Hannu Ranjaniemi has just had a major three book pre-empt offer made on the first chapter of his SF novel by Gollancz. That's a three book deal on just 24 pages, folks. Something tells me this is going to be an outstanding trilogy! Go Hannu!

Sometimes it feels as if the world has gone mad

2008-10-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

I've been absent for a while and the world has gone crazy. As writers and readers we reflect this madness. Can authors save the world? Can I as an author help?

I'm reasonably good at maths, but no one has asked me to sort out the Wall Street fiasco nor have they called on my political skills to stand in the US election. It's true I'm not an American citizen, but I do frequently create both military and diplomatic dissension in my writing and then I resolve it, so I guess you could say I have a lot of foreign policy experience. After all what could be more foreign than a fictional reality? I could spin off here into comments about the media and fiction and how I view it all as an once-journalist. But, more importantly...

Fiction cannot be other than a mirror to reality. As authors we write from our own experience however we clothe our tale. We aspire to touch our readers - in the most cases for the better. Publishers have to be concerned with what will sell - this may sound harsh, but they need to stay in business.

Let us consider the current craziness..

Beaufort books are speeding up their publication of The Jewel of Medina, a fictionalized tale of Aisha, wife of the Prophet Muhammad. The novel had earlier been dropped by Random house because of threats of violence. Bearing in mind that last weekend three men were arrested for firebombing the Beaufort's London office, these threats don't appear to have been idle. Beaufort have said that they believe that once the book is out there any threat will be neutralized. While author Sherry Jones says she feels no threat to her personal safety. What do I think? I think she's a brave lady. I believe in free prose, but I don't believe in denigration of creeds or cultures. I don't have a clue if Ms Jones' work lampoons an old and noble religion - and at this point the only people who do know are Ms Jones and her publisher.

As the world whirls readers need their escapism and they want it in particular, but unpredictable forms. At one of the Spectrum we have the happy world of the once single mother on benefit JK Rowling, who wrote her way to fame and last year earned an estimated $300 million. Forbes reports that second on the list of best selling authors is James Paterson with $50million with Stephen King (didn't he retire?) earning a mere $45 million. The tales of magical boarding schools now outselling a master of horror? (The master of horror?) What is it the modern public wants?

While over here in the UK the majority of authors earn around £5,000 a year - which I guestimate comes out at $8,800. This and the never ending pantomime of is print publishing here to stay or will it be gone tomorrow means that with the average lead time of a year for a book to make it into print publishers now days need a crystal ball to predict success. Or they need something outrageous, contentious or celeb backed.

Macmillian is happily reporting today that Gerri Halliwell's Ugenda Lavender's series is the 'most successful female celebrity children's author of 2008'. I think I have must have been blinking too much because I certainly missed the whole 'celebrity children's author' becoming a category in its own right. Though I don't doubt we will soon be seeing this special book corner labelled in stores.

Of course there is nothing preventing a celebrity from being a damn good author. There is also nothing preventing a non-celebrity from being one either, but I think we both know who publishers will forecast as a long shot.

Definitions on what actually constitutes a celebrity are invited.

(News of what I'm personally achieving must wait for future posts as contracts are signed and deals are done. However, I fear I shall continue to fail to be contentious or warm and fuzzy. Should I take singing lessons?)

Print Publishing- alive? dead? Or merely misunderstood?

2008-09-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

I started keeping tabs recently on the influx of stories in the international press about print publishing, the digital revolution, e-books, ebook readers etc. However, despite being in the industry I quickly got fed up reading the whole print publishing is dead - oh, no, it's not debacle. The whole thing is like Christmas Panto come early - and I've never liked Panto.

Now, I've only read about thirty of these yes/no stories over the last week and I'm sure there have been many more, but as yet I haven't found one that really seems to grasp the issue. It's more like a bunch of nuns attempting to explain to each other what sex is actually like.

What I think people are missing is that e-books and e-readers aren't going to do one specific thing. Or in other words neither e-book or e-reader is a single one use product.

Let me explain.

USE ONE

If I'm going on holiday I'd be delighted to take the free e-reader on my Ipod touch and have twenty odd books on it. I don't mind the reader isn't perfect. I'm not looking for a book alternative I'm looking for a way of lugging an unfeasibly large amount of escapist fiction on holiday with me. I'll put up with the odd bit of flickering.

USE TWO

E-publishing can bring a huge amount of new writing to us cheaply and easily. Here, I'm more concerned that my e-publisher has taste and discretion. We're talking about loyalty to a new industry, where I can log on read a review and for a fraction of the cost download a writer I may well be thrilled to discover. I'm still not that fussy about how I read it. It's the story that's important. Of course, I don't want to get a migraine doing it, but I may even be using my PC to read during my lunch hour and I may well decide to buy the POD if it's offered.

USE THREE

I'm a print publisher who wants to promote my books. I may well give them away free in a belief they encourage sales - and so far I believe, feel free to correct me, mainstream books that are released as e-books do hike sales. In this case I'm probably reaching those people not that into e-books (for whatever reason) who have a quick flick through and decide to buy the paper book.

USE FOUR

I'm a print publisher who believes all books should be available as e-books at the same price. Ain't going to work. E-readers are coming on in leaps and bounds but the leisurely comfort of a paper book is still hard to beat. Yes, this may happen in the future, but the future's not here yet.

USE FIVE

Huge reference books - not that much different to those DVD reference works, but easier to keep in your pocket. Main market liable to be academics and students - and maybe bird watchers as long as the e-reader is quiet enough.

By now you're hopefully getting the idea. The ebook and the e-reader will be many things to many people. At the moment we have critics talking as if all e-books and e-book readers do the that same thing which is like saying all time telling devices are the same - when in reality we have church clocks, mantel piece clocks, wrist watches, bedside clocks, precision clocks - they all let us do the same thing, tell the time, but in many different ways and for many subtly different reasons. And you're certainly not going to buy a church clock as a bedside alarm in much the same way as you're not yet going to spend hundreds of pounds or dollars on an e-reader if you're only intending to use e-books to decide what you're going to buy in print.

I like the whole concept of e-books. I predict they will have a future, but it's an organically growing future and it is as much down to the social requirements as it is down to the evolution of tech.

Guesting

2008-09-13T04:26:00.001-07:00

Guesting today at Lyrical Press blog.

Is it alright to frighten the children?

2008-09-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

I grew up during the cold war and at some point when I was very young some idiot told me about the four minute warning. So on those nights when I awoke from a bad dream, and like many people struggled with those moments of 4am irrational fear, it was all compounded by the fear of incoming missiles. If during those nocturnal post dream moments I heard the sound of something in the sky I would watch the bright red lights of my bedside radio alarm count down four minutes until I was sure I was safe.

I used to think I was absolutely mad. Now I know creative, imaginative children with other things on their mind (like exams or bullying) are particularly sensitive to these kind of end of the world fears. And Wednesday's switch on of the little big bang machine had even the most dull and unimaginative child in my son's school playground asking their mum's if the world was going to end.

But c'mon it was a great story. It made physics almost 'sexy' for a short period of time and after we'd spent so much money on the project (UK contribution around £500M) surely the press should play up the story a bit?

Well, no, I don't think so. And neither did one little girl in India, who was so scared she killed herself. The story I draw this from in the BBC counts numerous examples of children being afraid and parents, who have very little knowledge of physics having to counter alarmist fears raised by the press in general.

And besides the catastrophic fear was of the creation of run away black holes - there was no way on earth (or beyond it) for that matter that this could happen on Wednesday. This was only a test of beams running in a single direction. The actual high speed collisions will be happening next year after the machine is shut down for the winter for calibration. So, the press, always knew there was absolutely no danger of the world ending on Wednesday.

But if I step away for a moment from my rant against irresponsible journalism, I want to raise the point that children's literature and children's movies are growing increasingly dark. There's a school of thought that says as long as there is a good outcome children will put up with a lot of darkness before they get to the light. And yes, story is about conflict, obstacles - and usually the killing off of parents, so publishers won't be seen to condone children doing dangerous things. (If they're orphans there's no one looking after them and they don't know any better. Honestly. If you don't believe me, do a mental check of modern children's lit and see how many popular, adventuring little heros or heroines actually have parents!)

I think in many ways it's true that children are resilient to darkness. They like to see the heros battle the odds. But we're going a little further than that. In the finale of last season's Dr Who (and yes, this show is supposedly suitable for children) a father tried to protect his family (mother and child) by ordering them back into their house away from the daleks. The daleks line up and burn the house out. Now, Dr Who has always been about death. There's often the implication that tons of families are dying off screen, but it's not focussed in on.

And that's the key in any story, whatever the medium, all children can adore a struggle until it comes too close to home. When they start to imagine that it could affect them in their world, when they over-identify, then that's when we're hitting too hard.

Children can tell the difference between story and reality, but they can be overwhelmed by fictional misfortune and driven to total despair by irresponsible reporting. There are some lessons we want children to learn (for example) about the evils of war and violence, but no one learns anything when they're being frightened witless.

Copyright - friend or foe

2008-09-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

A lot of people don't understand copyright. A lot of people think it's outdated. A lot of people abuse it. But love it or hate it as an author you deal with the repercussions of copyright law on a daily basis. And as a consumer we all make choices all the time about how we respect (or don't respect) copyright.

As an author I hold copyright over my works. I've contracted to my publishers to allow them to produce my work for a set period and in return, because I hold the copyright, I'm paid royalties on every sale of my work. Royalties aren't a lot per copy, but they add up and they pay the bills - or more often than not, help pay the bills. Yes, some people do get advances. A few high fliers get a lot, but advances have to 'earn out' ie you don't get a further penny until you've sold enough in royalties to pay back your advance. It's also becoming increasingly common for mid-list and lower authors not to receive an advance, but to be on a royalty only contract. Most British authors earn less than £5,ooo per annum and therefore have a second job or three. But don't authors and artists deserve to be fully reimbursed for their creative contributions?

In the news today are two big name cases, author JK Rowling and music publisher, Universal Music Publishing. Their two stories highlight major copyright issues.

J. K. Rowling has just won her case to prevent the publishing of Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon. The Lexicon originally started life as a website for fans and was if not endorsed, at least 'supported' (in the words of the BBC) by Ms Rowling. However, when Mr Vander decided to turn this into a printed book and sell it Ms Rowling objected.

I have to go on record and say I absolutely support her action and applaud the judge who ruled in her favor. Her case was primarily upheld because the judge ruled 'Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide.' Ms Rowling said in a statement that she wasn't against works that explored her world per se, commenting that 'Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them.' She further added that Lexicon 'added virtually no original commentary of its own'. In other words, as a resource for fans she had no objection, but when someone decided to make money out of reprinting her ideas she objected.

Last year Stephanie Lenz uploaded a YouTube clip of her young son dancing to a song my Prince (Let's Go Crazy). Four months later it was removed after objections by Universal Music Publishing. Ms Lenz fought back, got her YouTube video reinstated and now it's had over 593,000 hits. However, the battle in court rages on. Ms Lenz's case is that she recorded her son to show his dancing to relatives and friends. And it has to be said that really you wouldn't chose to download this clip if you wanted to hear the music. Judge for yourself here. I'm not the biggest Prince fan, but if someone had told the background noise was whale music I wouldn't have argued.

The BBC website carries a long story about this and other recent copyright cases Universal Music Publishing has been involved with here. This includes Universal going after someone selling CDs on Ebay.

Before anyone raises the concept of Creative Commons in comments - yes, I do know what that is. And for those of you that don't know Creative Commons is a new idea for licensing creative work that allows you to reserve rights of your choice. Wikipedia entry here.

But the issue remains folks that writers and artists of all variants make their living from their work. With the new advent of e-books a number of pirate sites have cropped up where people are reposting original work, so readers don't have to go to the publisher's website and pay. A number I've come across seem to think they're doing the authors a favour and count themselves as fans. Honestly, if you're depriving us of our income you're doing your best to (even unwittingly) drive your author out of business and back into taking that fourth job stacking supermarket shelves.

It's a hugely complicated issue not helped by the fact that some of the new online bookshop browsers - ooh, let's say like ones that let you look inside books or search for a particular topic - are effectively letting people download recipes, poems, short stories, technical and academic information for free. There are only going to be certain instances when you still want to buy the whole cow.

I've yet to come across a copyright law I thought was perfect - and there is no doubt that some people abuse copyright laws to a ridiculous extent. In general, authors at least, are happy to be quoted, tolerant or flattered by fanfiction (which at least involves significant imagination on the behalf of the fan fiction writer) and accept, even if they don't like it, that people will buy a book and share it around their friends.

The stories I've quoted focus on people who have made an awful lot of money from their work. They are the exception. These cases are about the role of copyright for all authors and artists; the majority of whom earn a pretty meagre yearly income. Don't let the names and bright lights of these stars blind you to the real issue. Maybe there will come a day when authors and other artists are paid in a different way, but right now with the massive slices taken by publishers, music companies, etc the majority of authors and artists need their royalties to survive and continue to produce their work.

It's in the Stars

2008-09-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

If you're been reading this blog for any length of time then you know how keen I am on the e-books event horizon.

Today the The New York Times carries the announcement of Constellation a new venture aimed at independent publishers by Perseus Books Group. Perseus, through Constellation, are offering to negotiate rates to give independents access to electronic readers, digital book search and POD at costs similar to those advantaged to the big boys. They already have Google, Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble (Search Inside) on board as willing to offer packages that the little people simply couldn't get on their own.

And this is where I predict the heart of the electronic revolution will be. It's all about new writing. Yes, people may some day prefer to have their copy of Pride and Prejudice on their Ipod, but I don't think that day is here yet. (Mind you, not having to lug around War and Peace would have its advantages.)

But no, with print publishing becoming ever more restricted - dare I say hidebound? - and with rising costs for both promotion and publication - the market for new, exciting, break through authors is going to move more and more into the electronic world.

The independents in question in this case may already be print publishers, but it will be in the electronic world they have the biggest opportunity to make a virtual splash.

Novels for the time impoverished?

2008-09-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

Having fallen prey to the emergencies of real life, and in particular the demands of small people, this will undoubtedly be one of my shortest posts. Although in terms of fashionable brevity by the time you've read to this point it's overlong.

The solution to my current time shortage may be a new Japanese phenomenon keitai sohousetsus. ReadWriteWeb reports that mobile phone novels account for half of the top ten best selling novels in Japan in 2007. Many of the authors are Japanese school girls bashing out the next tiny bit of the story between classes. Western authors are now attempting to copy the idea using the ubiquitous twitter. So far this hasn't been a resounding success. The market is open!

Priorities

2008-08-27T04:25:00.000-07:00

While the world lurches from one political crisis to another, I read this morning of the unconnected, but poignant, death of a fellow author.

Dave Freeman, c0-author of the best seller, 100 things to do before you die -travel events you just can't miss, died suddenly at the age of 47 in a freak accident at his home in Venice, California. He'd only done 50 of these 100 things - the others were completed by his co-author, Neil Teplica. But even so Mr Freeman had obviously had an extra-ordinary range of experiences beyond most people's dreams. The blurb on the back of this book reads "This life is a short journey. Make sure you fill it with the most fun and visit the coolest places on earth before you pack those bags for the very last time." He was single and loved traveling solo because of all the interesting people he met that way.

It sounds an amazing, if tragically short, life, but definitely not the one I would have wanted. I am not, nor ever will be, a solo adventurer except when I am traveling within the confines of my own imagination.

But it makes you think, doesn't it? None of us ever know how long. So if there is something you've been thinking of doing, dreaming about, hesitating over, today might be a very good day to take that first step.

And if you've been talking about, even planning on writing, that book someday, start today!

Protecting our precious darlings

2008-08-26T01:23:00.000-07:00

I'm a mother of two young children, one six and one six months. I often wish the world was a better, kinder, gentler place for them, but it isn't and as my kids grow up I want to arm them with information about the real world, to encourage them to be honorable, to respect others and above all to learn to make their own choices. My problem is what on earth am I going to let them read by way of entertainment?

While I've been busy at the Edinburgh International Book Festival children's and YA's (Young Adult) fiction has been under siege. It's political correctness gone mad.

Jacqueline Wilson, one of the most prolific writers of young adult and children's books, has had her work censored after one great aunt complains to a supermarket. Apparently this 55 year old great aunt bought the book for great niece and while pre-reading it for her niece -because heaven knows even if it's published for children by a respectable publisher it still might not be good enough - and thank goodness she did because -shock, horror - she found a bad word in it. Over 150,000 thousand copies of this book had already been sold (all those little minds corrupted), but when Great Aunt complained to the Supermarket the Supermarket felt they had to pull the book. And in this day and age when Supermarkets have such an effect on the publishing market (don't get me started on their low, low, low prices that offer such royalties that authors will soon be living in garrets and roasting rats for tea) the publisher must jump - and they changed the book. Can you believe it? The offending word has now been replaced with the word twit - change the vowel in the middle if you want to work out what it was before.The character in the book who utters the bad word is not a nice character; the book doesn't seek to promote bad words or suggest using them is cool. What it is doing is saying yes, kids know bad words too. Personally, I'm a fan of Ms Wilson (who's a Dame btw), who produces work that not only doesn't talk down to young people, but deals with many of the harsher and very real issues that young people have to face in our society today.

Then there's the argument about age-branding. Because you know, when a child turns eight then they can suddenly read all those books for the 8-12s, but not a moment before (on the dot, on their birthday, at the exact time of their birth). Authors on the other hand are arguing that children to learn to read at their own rate and that some children may be more advanced for their age and others less so. If you're a young person for whom reading is a bit of challenge at ten you're not going to be happy about being handed a book that is clearing marked for 7-9 are you? Besides I seem to recall when a certain series about a magical school launched there were an awful lot of very large eight year olds reading it.

But above all children's authors must now be paragons of virtue in their private lives. The Guardian reports on the new contract details for Random House authors. The actual clause reads "If you behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Delay publication/ Renegotiate advance/ Terminate the agreement." The Society of Authors have suggested that authors ask for this clause to be removed.

Edinburgh International Book Festival and Rejection

2008-08-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of days I've been running workshops at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). The EIBF, for those that don't know, is quite a big deal in the UK. The gardens of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh are, for a few short weeks, transformed with a series of giant tents into a paradise for book lovers. The place throngs with readers, would be writers, agents, publishers, writers, politicians and journalists. Everything that is most current in publishing in the UK is represented here and you never quite know who you are going to run into next.

Yesterday I ran a workshop on Dealing with Solitary Creativity. I had a great group of active participants and at the end a flurry of positive comments. I also had an industrial spy. Perhaps the term is a little strong, but at the end one of my participants told me that the chap sitting next to her couldn't contribute to the paired elevator pitch exercise as he was in PR at Random House and was scoping out the workshops. However, he did give some excellent insight into how she should pitch her book.

Then I had tea with John Prescott.

To be precise John Prescott and I were both drinking tea about three feet apart, but actually I was talking to his sign language interpreter for the day, Kyra. So technically I had tea with John Prescott. The author's yurt (and it really is a yurt) is open to all participants at the festival, so you frequently end up mingling with the famous. On Saturday the Prime Minister was there, but I wasn't.

Today's workshop was about dealing with rejection - the bottom line of which was

it happens to everyone
it hurts
it's not personal
it's something you can learn from
it can be the start of a relationship (ie no we don't want this, but your writing is interesting.

To be a writer is to be a paradoxical creature. It's to be someone who happily spends hours in their own imagination creating worlds and who must also fully engage with life.

Today I am also guesting at The Lyrical Press Blog - where I talk a lot of about print versus ebooks having spent the week so far surrounded by print focussed people.

BBC article on e-books

2008-08-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

BBC predicts future for e-books here.

Workshops, courses, know hows and don'ts

2008-08-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Along the journey to becoming a professional author lots of people will try to take money off you. Open any magazine that might possibly have a wannabe author reading it and you'll be swamped with adverts offering help. Personally, I'm deeply dubious of anyone who says they can explain how to become a best selling author overnight. Best selling authors make a lot of money (much more than your average UK author's income of £5,000) and if said instructor knows how to do this why is he or she teaching? Similarly, there are thousands of distance learning courses and people who will read your books for a fee and proffer advice. And then there are the courses you attend. Aspiring writers are positively besieged by people promising success for cash. But can they ever actually help? Common sense tells you that the majority of people who attend courses, workshops, pay fees for this and that aren't going to make it. There simply aren't that many books published.

However, there are some reputable agencies and tutors. The Literary Consultancy and Cornerstone reading services have very good reputations. That MA in East Anglia keeps turning out best selling authors. The Arvon foundation gets some pretty cool tutors. All in all there are some fine opportunities out there, but there are also a lot of charlatans. Whoever you're thinking of giving money to research them very, very carefully. Although Preditors and Editors is US biased in this global day and age it's always worth checking out. And of course you all have your copies of either The Writers and Artists Yearbook or The Writer's Handbook to keep you straight.

And sometimes you benefit greatly from meeting people who are a little further along the journey than yourself and are able to point out the potholes.

I've just finished preparing my workshops for the Edinburgh International Book Festival next week. One is on dealing with rejection and the other on the difficulties of solitary creativity. The workshops are for twenty-five people and sold out within twenty-four hours of booking opening. However, I have no idea who is coming, nor what level they are at. Therefore I have to take a lot of decisions blind.

I've run workshops at the EIBF before and so I know for a lot of attendants the most important part is being with other aspiring writers. Some of them will be very well published and looking for a few tips, and some of them will be just starting out. I deal with such a mixed bunch by both providing basic and essential information and also incorporating a number of exercises that make my participants dig down deep inside to understand why they write and what they want from it. (Being a psychotherapist definitely helps with the latter.)

Twitterings

2008-08-04T08:41:00.001-07:00

I'm going to be at the Edinburgh International Book Festival from this Saturday, so I've finally succumbed to twittering. You can find me on twitter as verdandiweaves. Let's hope EIBF has their web access sorted. At the moment the Festival is some tents and a very muddy green. It goes live on the 9th. The website is here and while many shows will be sold out there are always returns. Entrance to the general site is free, replete with cafes, bookstores and famous people roaming around.

Are you intrigued by Spam?

2008-08-01T05:03:00.000-07:00

Weird Tales is running a competition for flash fiction inspired by the subject lines of spam emails. Full details here.

Please learn from my mistakes - contracts

2008-08-01T02:53:00.000-07:00

Nowadays I use the Society of Authors to check all my contracts - and a grand job they do too. But when I started out writing I was so, so, so happy when anyone accepted anything I didn't pay much attention to contracts. And (hangs head) I'm not sure I even kept them all. But then back then it was more informal with many British smaller magazines - we were all too busy running from dinosaurs to get hung up on paperwork.

So last night and this morning I have spent several hours trying to track down if I have the rights to a story published in 1995. I'm pretty sure I have, but as I now have an offer for further publication I need to be sure. (Generally with a short story you offer first British serial rights, so that after initial publication rights revert to the author.)

The magazine I was published in now no longer publishes fiction, but I believe has only ever asked for first British serial rights. I've finally tracked down the current editor and emailed him.

And if you're wondering why I resubmitted a story without being sure about ownership - the confession gets worse. I came across the story, liked it, thought it needed a bit of editing and had entirely forgotten it had ever been published.

Perils of solitary creativity - things that get you away from your desk

2008-07-31T06:50:00.001-07:00

Perhaps one of the oddest things about a writing career is that so-called real life can easily and rudely tear you away from your internal worlds.

Working from home, as most writers do, lays you open to terrible, terrible traps. Now, I have a wonderful partner, who doesn't expect me to spend my time clearing up the domestic disasters my children regularly create, but of course they do have to be done. School holidays tend to upset all regular plans, but outwith these I am very strict on the hours I work. I need to be. My brain offers me a thousand reasons a day to stop doing something I love and go and do something far more boring instead.

Here's a list of things that happen to writers working at home. See if you can work out which I think are genuine reasons for stopping writing.

- the phone rings (friends and family know you're liable to be in)

- the meter man, local religious salesman, postman or lost soul rings your doorbell shattering your train of thought

- the house is terribly untidy and you're unsure if there are enough clean towels to last the weekend

- there's that awfully good programme on the telly that no one else is interested in and would really help your research

- it's sunny and you're feeling down - a good dose of vitamin D would be just the thing

- your professional blog is looking very empty

- you know you absolutely must clean the cooker

- a friend phones to ask for urgent help on a script or essay

And my take on the above -

- the phone is an interrupt device. Unless you have good reason to answer, such as (in my case)fearing what my wonderful but non-conformist six year old son might have got himself into at school, don't answer. If you don't have a answer service of some kind (and really any professional should have one) if it's urgent they will ring back. Encourage friends and family to contact you by email, so you can answer when you choose and won't get drawn into lengthy conversations at inappropriate times. If you can't bear to turn your mobile off then switch it to silent and let the text messages accumulate until you're ready to read them. If you *have to* answer then keep the conversation short and to the point. Be polite, but tell people when they can reach you and that you are working now. No one expects a surgeon to be up for a chat in the middle of an operation, so why should they expect you to break off from building an entire world?

- For safety reasons you should have a spy-hole or camera in your door- use it. But even before you get out of your chair to peek consider the fact that the world will not end if you don't open the door. You can opt to give your own meter readings for supplies by phone or email. Religious salesmen and other lost souls you probably don't want to talk to anyway. Expecting a parcel? Then yes, maybe you should check. People coming to the door with serious news are rare, but if you can't rid yourself of the paranoid fear that this is Agent Million or a policeman come to give you terrible tidings then open the door, but keep it brief. Unless it really is startling news then two minutes is your target time from getting up to sitting back down in your chair.

- The untidy house. If you worked in an office you wouldn't be home to do this. Do not confuse working time with trying-to-get-everything-else-done time. There are advantages to working from home - a smartly tidy and overly clean house should not be one unless you are working as a housekeeper.

- That awfully good programme on the telly can be watched at any time. Do you need to watch it now? Will it help you where you are in this manuscript? Unlike fish recordings keep.

- It's sunny and you're feeling down. I consider this a good reason to leave your desk. As a species writers are very prone to depression, and there are days when things genuinely *won't* happen. So on very, very rare occasions when you are enveloped by your own personal black cloud and pursued by the raging dogs of misery quit your desk, go out in the sun, and take the day off. If you often feel like this buy a sunlight lamp or talk to your GP!

- Yes, professional blogs do need to be maintained. Allocate time to write for these. Don't use your creative time.

- Well, yes, you shouldn't have let your cooker get so filthy, but it's your brain playing tricks on you and trying to get you away from writing that hard scene or finding your way out of a plot tangle. The accomplishment you feel on cleaning the cooker will be nothing compared to the satisfaction you will feel when you get some real work done. Clean the cooker later. Keep a notepad on your desk solely for urgent tasks you suddenly remember when you're writing. Record the task and (unless it's something dire like turning off the gas) let it go until after your writing time.

- Friends and colleagues in need always deserve consideration as long as you reserve the right to say no. However talented you are others will only take your writing career as seriously as you take it yourself. If you constantly agree to help then your help will be sought constantly and your own work will suffer.

It is certainly true that you can think about your work while you are doing other things. But it is also true you can spend your life having ideas instead of writing. A writer writes.

Insight into the fate of the perfect submission

2008-07-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

Whether you're a writer, an aspiring writer or an avid reader you're probably aware that currently the UK print market is drawing in its horns - and the thing is I can't remember a time since I began writing professionally (back in the 80s when the world could end if your cat pulled the lead out of the back of your PET computer) when the current year hasn't been more tight than the last for the publishing industry. But books still get published. Best sellers, even from the occasionally newbie, fly up the charts and money is still made by publishers and authors alike. The market never stops needing books, but how do you convince a publishing house or an agency your book is the one they really need?

Note: Nowadays getting an agent is not unlike getting a publisher. The process you're liable to go through will look pretty much identical. If you get an agent first then they submit to a publishing house for you and it will go in with a harder sell and further up the chain of command than you can generally achieve as a solo author. In fact many publishers will now no longer read unsolicited manuscripts. (Though this can sometimes be overcome by meeting a publisher in a bar, buying them lots of drinks and getting them to agree to allow you to send in a few pages - and yes, this does still happen. I've done it and so have other writers I know.) However, in any case the first barrier your MS will hit is the submissions reader.

Let's assume you've written the best cover letter, have the most polished manuscript (or have a real go-getter of an agent who's going to do the approach for you) and have got your work onto the desk of a submission reader. There are now an almost limitless number of factors the hand of fate can employ to determine your destiny. Here are a few examples -

Is your submissions reader (SR) paid solely to read new ms? This is highly unlikely.
Is your SR a senior member of staff, who will have a great deal of sway with the department, but who has less than 10% of there time to spend reading new work (the rest of the time they're either promoting authors and/or books - i.e. have a punishing round of dinners and parties to attend)?
Has your book about the grief felt on the death of a beloved aunt landed in the lap of someone who has just buried a beloved aunt. (Lucky, lucky you.)
Has your book about the beloved aunt landed in the lap of someone whose aunt disinherited them this morning? (Much less lucky you)
Does your SR have a hang-over (from all those parties)?
Is your SR nineteen doing office experience, has little knowledge of the book world and throws up a little in her mouth when she reads about your protagonist octogenarian swinger couple? (Your leading lady sounds just like her grandmother -euw!)

In reality most agents and publishers do their best with submissions, but if your work is going in without invitation and is therefore ending up on the slush pile it may well be read by a very junior member of staff who is learning the market. In all likelihood it will take a long time for anyone to read it - the primary business of both industries is to promote whoever they already have on board, and it is not unheard of for the slush pile to be periodically RTS-ed in order to allow oxygen back into the office. Popular agents and publishers can receive hundreds of manuscripts a day. That's trees worth of paper stacking up day after day after day. (Don't get me started on why everyone doesn't take email submissions.)

But to continue our scenario - it's three months later and you haven't heard a thing. When you're feeling upbeat you imagine your submission is being handed round the department, passed up the line and soon you'll hear that someone wants to talk to you. But when you're feeling down you imagine your submission is a lost leaf in the virtual forrest of submission awaiting your chosen SR. And then there's always the chance it was lost in the post.

So what do you do? After a reasonable length of time do you email? I'd say after three months you were entitled to query. But then what if you query and are told you've made it through the first round? Do you query again in a few months time or do you wait? How do you keep yourself in the mind of a very busy agent or publisher without becoming an annoyance? It's a hard call and one where everyone has to find their own middle ground.

You have to create the best work you can. You have to believe in it-(don't be British and apologize for being a writer. You have to be clear, straight forward and professional in your dealings with agents and publishers. You have to be proactive without becoming a liability.

Ultimately, you have to trust your work to speak for itself - and trust the post office to get it there in the first place.

Why e-books should matter to writers

2008-07-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

After ranting about the wonder that is e-books it has just occurred to me why most of my friends aren't getting the revolutionary aspect of this technological shift. However, anyone reading this blog should have a good idea. But in case you don't -

The real impact of e-books

Launching a paper book costs a great deal of money. As the reading public tightens its belt publishers are more and more inclined to go with sure things, things in the vein of previous sure things and very occasionally something they believe (often erroneously) will be the next sure thing. People who write good entertaining stories that don't happen to have picked up on what the next sure thing is (recent ones include angst, misery, child murder, terrorism, angst, utter misery and yet more angst) aren't considered to have the cache of a breakthrough novel and therefore don't stand much of a chance of making it into the print market.

But now e-publishers, who can have just as good an eye as a print publisher (often a better and less angst obsessed eye), and who aren't so inhibited by finance, can take risks on new authors. I admit e-publishers are currently coming and going by the hour, but there are some who are staying - some who have been around for years. As e-publishers build up loyalty and reputation for sourcing new good work so the world expands a thousand fold for all those mildly published, yet to be published, those who have sunk to the bottom of the midlist and those who like writing less angst-ridden stories. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of angst? Dear gods, sometimes I just want entertainment from a book! If I want angst I can read my to-do list.)

And yes, some writers are already making a living from writing e-books alone. I know a lot of people don't believe this, but it's true. No-one I know in Britain yet, but across the pond they're going great guns.

And ultimately what's good for writers is good for readers. Like everyone else I've wandered into a bookstore and flicked hopelessly through the same-ish summer reads longing to find a 21st Century version of the wonderful (and sadly deceased) Robertson Davies, a new crime series that isn't embedded in blood, forensics and alcohol or a children's read that isn't about fairies or pirates (though a fairy pirate might be worth reading). E-publishing for both publisher and reader is an inexpensive option of experimenting with new writers. This, for me, is the real beauty and promise of the new ethereal world of the e-book.

More in The Independent on Waterstone's decision to sell the sony e-book reader here.

Professional Blogging - using, overuse and neglect

2008-07-19T17:50:00.001-07:00

One of the big issues with professional blogging is ensuring that you post often enough to remind people you exist. If you're running a professional blog the chances are you're doing this to increase your profile, boost your market share and generally convince people that they're doing themselves a huge disservice if they don't attend to what you've got to offer. What is unlikely is that a) you're paid for your blogging time and b)that you don't have a busy life outside the blog.

It's all a matter of balance. I've known (and still know) writers, who will talk rather like literary fishermen over several pints of beer of their magnus opus, the one great story that will make their fortune and fame. Over the years, I've become far too intimate with some of these stories, most of which had yet to take form in a single inked word. A blog can become rather like this. It can be a place where you indulge in a little trumpet blowing or even innocently spend all your time declaiming your plans.

There's a lot to be said for putting you intention out into the world. If it's done with serious thought and for-planning then blogging about a project is as much for yourself as it is for your audience. You can use a blog to drawn your line in the sand and say I will do this - ever aware that if your blog is becoming in the least bit popular you'll look a right idiot if you don't do it.

But we all have lives beyond blogging. I've been quiet the last couple of days as I wrestle with a tricky family matter where the old guard have asked me -as one of the young 'uns (they're all in their eighties) - to sort out a difficult family matter. I've had re-allocate my already precious time to cope with this new demand.

In particular I had to choose between returning to this blog and finishing a proposal for a new (and I think) very exciting project. I chose the to finish the proposal.

It's not a straightforward choice. If a blog is inactive for a few days, especially early on, it is likely to dropped by readers, who assume it has gone the way of other ether musings and faded into disuse. But then if I don't put the work first I'm blogging about blogging - in which case this ceases to be a professional blog and becomes more of a personal journal.

A professional blog is for life not just for Christmas, but it must always be run in parallel, and as a support, to your profession.

More on e-books

2008-07-14T01:31:00.001-07:00

Waterstones has just signed an e-reader deal. Full report in The Independent.

Professional Blog Writing (part 3) - We are our most annoying words

2008-07-14T00:41:00.001-07:00

Most writers are aware of the FOG index. This is a fairly simple formula to discover how readable your text is. Wikipedia has a definition here. For those adverse to maths Lichfield District council, who obviously pride themselves on clear communication, has an online FOG index checker that claims to be accurate within reasonable limits. Generally you are aiming for a FOG index of no more than twelve if you want your text to be appealing and ten if you're writing for a tabloid.

We all have favorite turns of phrase. My six year old now launches into imparting all his nuggets of wisdom with the preface 'By the Way', which is remarkably annoying. But then when I'm writing I'm prone to use certain words again and again that would doubtless drive my reader mad if I didn't ruthlessly prune them. A quick search of the net tells me there are relatively cheap programs such as this one that analyze your word patterns. But back in the old days when I was learning to write (and the air was thick with pterodactyls) you had to resort to combing through selected passages of past writing and simply searching for those annoying common words. Here are some of mine.

Just and almost - a suggestion perhaps that my psyche is always on the edge of madness.
Really, quite and actually - intimating I can't quite believe what I'm writing myself?

Over use of qualifiers is not unusual i.e. my major faults are actually quite common. (The shame!) But also look out for over use of favorite colors. There is nothing more irritating that discovering everything in a short story is 'sea-green' from the heroine's eyes to the color of the sky. Another danger is unusual verbs and obscure words.

We all try to write well, but as writers we do fall in love with certain expressions and words. Sometimes these are because they represent an underlying issue in our psyche (like my I don't believe this myself!). Sometimes it's because those around us overuse certain phrases - in the '80s none of my friends in the computer industry could start a sentence unless they said 'basically' first. - And sometimes it is simply because we have fallen in love with certain words (the more uncommon we perceive them to be the more likely this is.) To a certain extent this is our signature voice, but any voice can become annoying (Basically, By the Way, Didn't you know?). Be aware of your word patterns.

Being aware of these patterns also helps immeasurably in creating the unique voice of individual characters in fiction. By deliberately assigning a word pattern to a character you can make them jump off a page as easily as if you had put them in dialect.

E-books are go!

2008-07-10T12:55:00.001-07:00

The world of e-publishing will change tomorrow.

An e-book reader (by William Younts of Fictionwise Inc) for the iphone and ipod touch is here. It uses the standard e-reader format. Suddenly electronic books have become a whole lot more accessible and a whole lot cooler.

The application is available now from itunes - here. It's FREE. It won't work until tomorrow when the updates for the iphone and ipod touch are released - and then publishing will become a whole different ball game.

Procrastination versus discipline - harsh realities

2008-07-09T04:23:00.000-07:00

Anyone can be an expert in the art of procrastination.

Today I had a long and useful work conversation. I have substantial notes from it to correct and develop a piece. I've also fed both children, entertained the baby for a bit and explained various house rules yet again to my older son (6) - such as why it's not ok to stuff the pancake you don't like under your chair. I've put on the dishwasher. I've watched a bit of a program I recorded last night. I've dropped a few comments on other blogs (and have obviously been reading other blogs too.) Finally remembered I need breakfast too and cleaned out the microwave. It's not quite 12.30pm and I'm ill with the cold from hell. On the sofa sits my eeepc along with one sheet of paper on which is written the one paragraph I wrote yesterday.

Working from home lays me open to a great deal of temptation. My house is not, and probably during my lifetime will never be, tidy, but there are always bits I can do. Obviously, the demands of the children are paramount, but the dishwasher would not have wept if I hadn't emptied it until after I've actually done some writing. But would if be different if I was at an office? I could hang around the water cooler, chat to colleagues and take long lunches... And I'd be fired.

As a writer I work for myself. This means I have to cultivate an inner boss, who will remind me when necessary that writing is a real job. It's not to be done between bouts of housework and any other duty I can drag up to be done because I-am-the-one-at-home. It's rather that all that stuff has to be done in-between my writing. It doesn't matter how much (or how little) I make from my writing. If I intend to succeed then I do have to write. (This may seem obvious, but a long time ago, when I was still an amateur, I once belonged to a writing group where everyone said they were serious about making their writing career and over three months the only one who wrote anything was me. I suspect the other members still meet and talk about when they will write.)

Today, with the average UK yearly income for a writer being £5,000 (sorry to disappoint), the majority of writers have second jobs. I'm lucky my second job is being a mother, but I will argue (and argue quite viciously) that it's at least as demanding, if not more so, than most other occupations. (You also cannot leave your children at the office - and no matter how very, very much you love them, - there will always be moments when you wish you could.) So if you want to be a writer, amateur, professional or best selling, you need to carve out your time for writing, and when you are in those hours of the day, unless there is a real crisis (and weeping dishwashers don't count) then you will write, plot, or in some concrete way move forward your writing career.

Inspiration - the gaining of

2008-07-07T03:35:00.001-07:00

Inspiration is a mysterious beast. Whether you believe it hails from the touch of Odin's Mead or a sudden synergy of experience inspiration is the highlight of creating.

By now only people living in the remotest of locations won't have heard the story of how the first Harry Potter novel unfolded for JK Rowling while she was traveling on a train. In my imagination this has inspired a small army of aspiring authors to take to the rails clutching notebooks and laptops hoping that lightening with strike twice in the same place.

And if it has, I don't think they would be going that far wrong. Below I'm going to list key actions that really kick my brain into gear. If you're lucky they might work for you. I'm talking specifically about writing, but most of the ideas below will work for inspirations seekers of all kinds.

- do something different

Doing something away from your normal routine forces your brain out if its normal thinking patterns. If you can go outside your comfort zone even better. You stop repeating your life and start constructing it. This cannot help but change your perspective.

-carry a notebook and a pen at all times

I know! I know! Every writing course since the beginning of time labors this point. But do you? Don't count on your memory to retain the glittering gold of the moment.

- write something different

Switch genres, if only for an hour or two. Be really brave and switch forms. Writing a play requires a very different way of thinking to working on a novel.

- explain where you're stuck (for a new idea or on a plot point) to someone else

This is best done with a quiet friend (or cat). The act of talking aloud changes your brain processes, and simply having to explain your reasoning will show up strengths and weaknesses in your plot. (Cats are particularly good at making you justify yourself. It's in their nature to be aloof.) But you're not looking for extensive feed-back. Other people's ideas are often destructive to emerging ideas, so in desperate circumstances (if your friends are of the loquacious variety and you have no cat) you could always use a plant pot. Although having someone point out huge misconceptions/plot holes is as useful as it is painful.

- accept that you need fallow time

Creatives are like fields. Sometimes your soil is exhausted. You need to step back and rejoin the human race for a while. Maybe it will be hours. Maybe weeks. Perhaps even longer. But you cannot force good ideas.

- think about turning the music off

For some people music is inspirational for others like myself it's distracting. Music affects mood and if it's not in harmony with what you're writing then it's not helpful. Although music will work for some, it's rarely good for you to split your attention.

- read other people

This post was inspired by reading about Fiona Glass' Archimedes moment.

-accept sometimes your brilliant inspiration isn't quite right and will need further development

All of this is brought to you while I wait for my very kind, patient and lovely BBC radio producer to phone and explain why the latest version of my play (which I thought was very inspired) isn't quite right yet.

Creating A Professional Blog Part 2- Credibility

2008-07-07T02:12:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly as if there is a shortage of blogs out here, but how do you establish yourself as a blog that can be trusted more than the bloke down the pub?

A long time ago, there used to be a term 'the authority of print' and people really did believe what they read in the the newspapers. Nowadays there have been enough newspaper scandals to convince the general public that things are not always what they seem. My personal watershed came when I was working on a Sunday paper during the first Gulf war and there was a frantic search for 'an expert' to comment on what was then an unprecedented situation. TV news, with the publicly exposed different coverage of various US channels in particular, has lost a lot of its weight. Possibly radio, particularly the BBC world service, retains some credibility, but blogs? Most of them are way, way down the information feeding chain.

However our thirst for information is greater today than ever. Information has become more tradable than a spy's whisper during the Cold War. There's a huge daunting body of facts out there that for many people is simply overwhelming. So first of all when you're establishing a professional blog of any kind endeavor to the best of your ability to ensure that at your time of writing any facts are accurate and any opinions you offer are founded on reasonable research. It doesn't matter if your blog is well known at this stage or not. Once your blog is out there it is out there and there's no going back. Remember the best way to be regarded as an expert is to offer information that is generally found to be correct.

Make your blog readable. The world of the blogger is not an academic one. This isn't the place for you to parade your superior knowledge of adverbs or show how you could star on the BBC word lovers' show, Call My Bluff. It's a world most often read by readers, who are taking a break, sneaking a quick google search when their boss isn't looking, and for a great many looking for entertainment. It's easy to google facts, but to make someone read your blog regularly you're going to have to give them something that is as great a pleasure to read as you can offer.

Tell readers how you know what you do. This comes after readability because you can be the most informed person in the world and still be thoroughly inaccessible. If you're an author like me you quote some of your publications. You drop into your writing how you used to work on international papers. You mention the thirty odd short stories (some of them very odd) you've had published. And of course, you promote your up and coming products, because ultimately the reason you're writing your blog is promotion.

You may be writing to establish yourself as an expert, to help publicize your work, your creations or even your political opinions, but this isn't why people read you until you become very, very famous. Promotion is a side effect of a blog. It's the side effect you might desperately want, but ultimately people turn to blogs for entertainment and information that helps them. Offer your readers useful links when you can. Make it personal in a way that allows them to trust you. For example if you're a writer writing to writers or a mother writing to mothers, emphasize with the very real struggles and challenges these particular occupations land you in. Don't be an all-knowing, all-seeing guru. Offer up the mistakes you've made and share what you learnt. Showing your humanity and a capability to laugh at yourself are endearing traits.

And at this point I should offer a personal story about myself. However, another key issue in establishing credibility, and one that is linked to loyalty too, is not to go on too long. Be assured then that I do poke fun at myself on Write Forward and please drop by any time.

Creating a Professional Blog Part 1 - tag lines and audience

2008-07-04T01:57:00.001-07:00

The only point of having a professional blog is if you can get people to read it. But before you get down to the nitty gritty of google analytics and traffic flow promotion, you need to work out who you are trying to reach and why. Then along with your smart and witty title you need a few words of explanation that sums it all up - a really stunning tag line.

I'm in the middle of developing this blog, scratching my head over google analytics, collecting reciprocal links, links that reflect my current research and links I think all aspiring authors should read.

And there you have it. This is what my tag line needs to say. I decided when I set up this blog it wouldn't simply be about what goes on in my head as an author - fascinating and odd though that is - but it would also be of interest to other writers. I'm not simply writing this blog for people who I hope will read my work, but for people who want to write, are writing or are meaning to write someday themselves. I am passionate about writing. It defines me. I am also passionate about it as an activity and keen to promote it in all its forms. I have an underlying belief that for relationships on a personal and a global scale to prosper we have to listen to each other. Spoken words are all too often lost in the wind. The considered written word can change everything.

And back to the lighter side...

I did come up with the snappy tag line 'Musings of a Crimson Tea-Cat'. This relates to my endless consumption of tea, that I often wear a crimson robe when I'm writing and that I like cats. It's memorable, but not informative. And while it might increase the flow of cat lovers to my site, it is also more likely to suggest that I am a mad cat lady rather than an author. On a personal journal it would be fine, but here it's largely irrelevant. It's a title better reserved for a short story. (Even if I could have added 'spitting out hairballs of wisdom'. It's all too easy for me to get carried away with these things.)

Another idea was 'A girl, a mac and an imagination create'. The Mac part is relevant. I'm a strong supporter of the mighty Apple in its many forms as an excellent aid to creativity. But the title doesn't make it clear if this is a journal of a high school student or a published author, let alone touching on the issue of author resource.

'Components of a working author' is currently the strongest contender. It's not quite right, but it's informative while still being intriguing enough to click on. It states I'm an author and suggests I'm going to write about the ins and outs of authoring. It addresses both the issue of building a fan base and supporting other authors.

I could have waited until I got the tag line perfect before launching this blog, but Write Forward is about going forward, writing on, developing work as an organic process. If you wait until an idea is perfect in your head you will never write it. Once you have material you can work with it.

I'll be interspersing the Creating an Author Blog posts among other musings. So far on my list to do are establishing credibility, the art of reciprocal links, increasing traffic flow and ( hopefully one day) understanding google analytics. Please feel free to tell me about your glorious tag lines in comments (free promotion, folks), suggest a better one for me or raise any other issues that you think should be addressed in the Creating an Author Blog spin-off!

Starting Out

2008-07-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

A few months ago a friend gave me a tip that a publisher was looking for some new weekender writers. Now, in case you don't know, a weekender is a stand alone novel about 50,000 words in length and something you (can you guess?) read at the weekend to forget the horrors of the office. It needs to be light and compulsive; in short a perfect bite of escapism. With my recent foray into epublishing with two romances (one urban fantasy Make Me One with Everything, one supernatural romance Appointment with the Past) appearing with Lyrical Press in November, it has dawned on me that I am capable of writing the shorter novel. However, when I queried about the publisher about 'the tip' I discovered they are not looking for romance. What a challenge.

I spent a couple of months thinking about this - certainly, longer than I had intended. Admittedly, while I published a post on why writers should have babies, it is also true that babies eat your writing time. At best they do it with a goo and a gurgle. At worst - well, in case you're about to eat soon I'll spare you. So let's just say there can be days, sometime weeks when you can't get to a keyboard. This isn't always a bad thing.

Yes, in a perfect world I would write everyday at a set time, but when I'm thinking about a new idea sometimes not being able to write is a godsend. It's all too easy too kill an idea by exposing before it is ready. Never, never, tell a friend what you're working on until an idea is established both in your mind and on your hard disc. The innocent, but searching questions of friends, will kill many an idea on the vine.

When a new idea pops into my mind it has problems, often lots of problems. Mulling it over, making the odd note until I am desperate to get to the keyboard, if it's a good idea, gives it a life of its own. It matures in my brain and gets to the point where it's pushing to be born. And if you let it out at that moment there ain't no stopping it. (Ask any woman who's been in labour.)

I'm not suggesting for a moment that this formed idea with be perfect. It will need (again with the baby simile) to be nurtured, schooled and generally tended. Personally, I will often write an opening (which may or may not make it into the final version), then construct a plot outline and then day by day start winding out the text. As I'm writing ideas will often pop up in the unlikeliest of places which may mean a rethink or an edit of the outline. It's an organic process with the chicken and the egg constantly vie-ing for first place.

But this is how I start. How about you?

Why writers should have babies

2008-06-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

I have a four month old baby. He doesn't talk.

Yes, I know this is quite normal. I already have an older son and he didn't talk as a baby either. In fact, long before he emerged onto the scene I knew, like the rest of you, that babies don't talk. However, when you're confronted with the reality of caring for a tiny human, who does interact, but without words - and you spend most of your life using words, it is a bit of a shock. Not least because so much is 'said' without words. You end up having _years_ of conversations in which one party communicates entirely non verbally.

There were several positive side-effects during my son's first year. Characters in my writing started moving more, demonstrating by action as well as with words their intent. This new take on communication helped even more when I was writing stage plays. Because of how my baby and I were communicating I become much more in tune and more cognizant of how physical communication between actors can work on stage.

And when he started to talk - number 1 son is now six - I found and still find that I have to be very clear with my directions and I am frequently called upon to define new words. I am of the school of thought that you talk to children as you would to an adult rather than in doggy-woggy terms. (This does pay off. When asked about his favorite animal my son replied without hesitation 'a chameleon' because of its 'natural ability in camouflage'. He was three and a half at the time.)

Effectively all mothers teach their offspring language from scratch. It's quite a duty and if you're going to do it well you need to develop the ability to be an exhaustless and accurate, walking thesaurus. It makes you think very carefully about your use of language.

Now, I'm back again in babyland I'm finding my writing is again becoming more physical and it is all the fresher for it. As for the fact I'm having one-sided conversations most days, I've always both read and plotted aloud when I'm checking out ideas and difficult passages. It's rather nice to have a constant critic, whose worst remark is 'goo' and will smile even at the most tortuous of prose.

When do you call yourself a writer?

2008-06-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

It says 'writer' on my passport - even though it's out of date. At the time I got it I was working as a full time journalist and so 'journalist' would also have been an option, but I reckoned 'writer' would cause less fuss at foreign customers. To my mind, writers are viewed as mildly eccentric, but essentially harmless. Journalists, on the other hand, are more likely to be construed as noisy and possibly even up to no good.

But it was a choice I could make. Not being an ant I don't actually have a designation in my local hive or colony. I can describe myself as a I wish. A rather successful Scottish playwright I know tells the story of how he always described himself as a playwright, who was currently working in a game shop, while he waited for the rejections to cease and fame to begin. He had some really, really horrible rejections including one that asked him for the sake of theatre to stop writing. But he didn't.

Calling yourself a writer is about self-definition - telling the universe and everyone in it that that's what you are. You're also telling yourself. You can't claim to be a writer and not write. When you say it, enshrine it in various forms, you're drawing your boundaries and committing to a future - even if that future is full of rejection rather than success.

I'd like to say I started calling myself a writer when I had my first piece published in a newspaper (age 11) or even when prior to that I used to write plays at school that got performed to the whole school. But I didn't.

I'd like to say when I put writer on my passport application I felt strong and confident about it. However, despite the fact I was regularly writing for an international Sunday, I didn't. I felt like I was cheating. I was being read all over the world, working everyday including the weekends on pieces that were being published, but I didn't think I qualified.

It could be my good old British self-deprecation. It could be my very own special brand of lacking confidence. Calling yourself a writer is feels a big deal. But although I had success with short stories (even winning a couple of major competitions) it was only when I had my first son and decided I would be a mother and a writer - and started calling myself a writer to the outside world that the book publications, the mentorship and my involvement with the BBC came.

As is so often true in life, you need to believe in yourself for others to follow. You also need to know that you are a writer regardless of success, publication or public opinion. While I'd never advise someone to call themselves a dentist because they felt like it, being a writer is different. You do have to believe it first yourself before others will follow.

Guesting at Lyrical Press

2008-06-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

Drop by The Lyrical Press Blog to see my thoughts on School's Out for Summer.

The Wide White Sky

2008-06-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

There are always those days when you sit in front your screen fingers resting idly on the keyboard and tumbleweed blowing through your mind. More often than not the days when you can't get to your computer are spent frantically writing paper notes or when for some ridiculous and highly implausible reason you can't get to a pen (eg you're with your kids in the swimming pool or breastfeeding) you end up repeating an idea over and over to yourself like a small mantra until you can get to a pen or your miraculous idea dissolves into the soup of everyday existence. And then there are those times when you're at your computer looking at the urgently scored and unwritten notes that says 'Cat Jelly Soup' totally unable to remember why you wrote these three words and somewhat fearful that dementia has arrived sooner than expected. There are days when it simply seems that the creative muse likes best to play when its ideas are most likely to be lost to the moment.

So what do you do?

I try at all times to have a pen, a notebook, an electronic notebook and in the worse cases a SMLAVSRD - supportive mobile listening and variably successful recording device (otherwise known as a friend) on hand. (NB never attempt to use your cat as SMLAVSRD. They may appear to listen, but the playback is always flawed.)

As for white screen - white screen time is for plotting and world building. When it comes down to it free flowing writing in character or the creation of great description is huge fun, but for most of us it rarely makes a novel. Whether you're writing fantasy or keeping it contemporary you need to know where your characters live. You need to know how their locations lie in relation to each other. You need to know who is in authority, who has jurisdiction over whom. And, of course, if you're writing fantasy you need to work out if a gerb is bigger than a greeb - and that's only the start.

Plotting is more complicated. The structure of the novel has been evolving since the first psychological novel was written. - I think this was Genji, but I'm open to correction - But novels do have structure. This structure rarely just comes into being. It's a puzzle that needs piecing together. If you can get the outline of this puzzle in place then the free flow of writing the A to B parts is not only enjoyable, but tends to comes more easily. (The writing programme scrivener is hugely helpful for plot and structure development.)

And if you're feeling utterly, utterly uninspired, it's time for housekeeping ie submitting to agents, publishers and trawling through relevant blogs and news sites.

But, and this is for another entry, writers are very like fields. We also need our fallow time.

Workshops Update

2008-06-21T02:23:00.000-07:00

At the start of this blog I mentioned I was running two workshops at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 'Dealing with Solitary Creativity' August 12th and 'Dealing with Rejection' August 13th. Both workshops are part of the Writing Business strand and sponsored by the Society of Authors (of which I'm both a member and a committee member).

Tickets went on sale yesterday morning. Solitary Creativity is already sold out and yesterday afternoon there were a few tickets left for the Rejection Workshop (which is a reprise of one I ran last year.)

So I strongly advise if you want to come to the second workshop - or indeed any of the writing strand workshops you book today, either on line or by phone. You can ask to be put on a waiting list for any returns, but it's at the discretion of the festival whether they do this (ie if they're too busy they'll ask you simply to show up on the day and wait for any returns caused by plague or disaster.)

What's the point of going to workshops? I can only tell you what happens in mine. I offer a mix of practical points, short exercises to demonstrate these and a query session. It's a lot to cram into 90 minutes and all my participants work hard! I also get a huge buzz from running these events because beginner writers are not only enthusiastic, but supportive of each other. My workshops are definitely not competitive (a major achievement in such a cut-throat industry!) and encourage writers to network and support each other. My hope is when you leave one of my events you are not only armed with practical skills, but you feel lifted, more optimistic and inspired.

What's left unsaid

2008-06-19T06:13:00.001-07:00

I take a great delight in the charming peculiarities of my friends. Small comments and actions can be such a window into someone's personality or life. Below are two examples. Names and faces are changed to protect the unwary.

Recently one friend told me about her family 'big book of health' and another about how all her family 'had a special place for their shoes' when they came in from a walk and then added how angry she was her husband never used his.

Friend number one, I assume, wants to be in charge of her own health. Being at an age where she is rapidly becoming older than the average doctor at her GP surgery, she wants to be able to question the suitably qualified, but often young, hurried and inexperienced experts. She is an extremely sensible person and this attitude seems in keeping with her over all persona. It also gives me a lovely picture of her pouring over this giant book of health, which is possibly almost as big as she is.

With Friend number two you don't have to know her to understand. It's the frustrated statement of a woman whose communication with her husband is breaking down. She's talking about shoes, but it's actually about her marriage.

In both instances it's what is inferred that is important. Every textbook ever created on writing says 'show not tell' - and this is often used as an excuse for labored description or over using very mundane dialogue. ('Hello' rarely _needs_ to be written in prose or play.) But if you listen to the very, very best dialogue it isn't someone speaking their feelings or giving a direction, it's about what they say without saying it.

With my Friend number one her comment has its biggest impact when you know some of her backstory. Friend number two's comment is immediately accessible.

Inference is a skill we develop as children - something my six year old is just learning to do, but once we learn it, we do it all the time. Allowing readers to infer what is going on pays tribute to their intelligence. It engages their brain and makes them more interested in what is going on. As humans we are programmed to make sense of things, to look for meaning and even when we're seeking entertainment we can't stop. Nothing is more boring than simply being told what is happening - not least of all because real people don't communicate directly. Hardly any of us are capable of saying exactly what we mean especially when emotions are involved - just like Friend number two.

Life and writing

2008-06-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago I went for an interview with the director of playwright sponsoring and training scheme here in Scotland. She's a lovely lady and very easy to talk too. Our interview took place in a graveyard. There were little plastic seats and there was tea and a small cafe, but I found myself repositioning my chair so as not to be on the edge of what I had taken to be a rather large paving slab, but on closer inspection clearly had 'dearly beloved' inscribed upon it. Now it might have been the perspective altering situation (carrot cake and coffin anyone?). It might have been the pleasantness of my interviewer. Or it may simply have been that generally I am pretty open about my life to date. But near the end of the interview my questioner took a deep breath and said, "Well, you certainly have a good seam of experience to mine."

She said it kindly, but in a never mind things will get better sort of a way. Now, I don't think I'm having a bad life. A great deal of my life (including hewhoshallbenameless and our offspring) is quite wonderful. But anyone who does know me in real life will know there have been the odd bump in the road - my diagnosis of having MS being one of them. In fact if I fly off into the air in my virtual helicopter of imagination and look down at the road I am choosing to follow and have followed there are quite a few bumps. But they're bumps, not dead-ends, not charmingly little cul-de-sacs of mind numbing suburbia, not huge great maws of hell belching flame onto my feet - such as we read every day in the news some poor innocent is experiencing. I seem (on some metaphysical level) to have taken the mandate of 'a little and often' when it comes to incidents into my life.

Sometimes it feels like I hardly ever get a moment to draw breath and add this to the very normal demands of two small children and a house that will never be tidy and life inside my head can be one barely sub-light blur.

And this is how I know I'm a writer.

Not because stuff happens to me - yes, my interviewer was right it does give me more to write about, but because despite stuff happening when I can't get to write at length I'm making notes. When I can't get to make physical notes I'm making mental ones. Because despite whatever crazy odd shaped bumpy bit I'm thrown nothing stops me writing.

For me, writing is an incurable condition.

epublishing and sticks

2008-06-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

Today I'm also posting on www.lyricalpress.blogspot.com - where I will be guesting on the 13th of each month.

Lyrical Press are a new e and pod publisher. They love all kinds of stories and are the first place to offer a home to my urban fantasy meets supernatural meets romance style writing.

When I first told the more traditional of my author friends of my intention to epublish their reaction was quite startling. The UK, where I am, is definitely not as technically forward in this area as the US, Canada or Japan, but one comment I received was 'Why are you doing this? Do you even know anyone who downloads and reads ebooks?'

But the thing is I do.

I'm a bit of a technophile and for a very short time during my first degree was in danger of becoming a computer scientist. But while I am a gamer I don't tend to wear a big belt to clip all my gadgets onto and I did have a habit of falling asleep in lectures about C++, so it wasn't going to be career path for me.

But I love science. I've even recently remembered how much I used to love New Scientist and I've been thinking about re-establishing my paper subscription rather than searching through the net. (Feb's edition this year had a major feature on why 2008 will be the year zero for time travel, and while my maths isn't quite good enough I can recognize a tardis at a hundred paces.)

I also subscribe to the idea that science fiction often drives science. I think the most often quoted example is of the overhead bed monitors in the sick bay of the original startrek that became a real world hospital reality. If you think about it it's hardly surprising that those who adore sci-fi as children and young adults might be inspired work in real world science to move our reality closer to their beloved fiction.

Today the majority of science fiction I find is fairly hard core - whereas my interest has always been in how science can influence both culture and society. And not least that we live in a world where some of us carry touch sensitive pdas and wireless communicators as a matter of course while far away in the amazon there remain tribes that have yet to be contacted by the outside world (Did anyone see those recent aerial photos of tribes men throwing sticks at helicopters?)

Now, while I wouldn't describe my traditional writing friends as quite throwing sticks at this newfangled epublishing lark, I do think they are missing the huge and exciting possibilities this world is opening up. Yes, there are internet publishers who appear overnight and disappear within a few weeks (sometimes dragging those all important rights with them), but there are people like Lyrical, who are new, but who are doing their best to promote and channel their merchandize and ensure as much as they can they only turn out top quality work.

As a writer of fiction I imagine worlds - and as one very good friend once told in a fit of fear that means we have to be everyone in that world - not a mean task before breakfast when only the cat is awake to keep you company. I also look around in this world and imagine possibilities here. When you've been reading news on the net it's all too easy to imagine the incoming darkness, but I think writers, more than anyone else, have to help imagine real futures. We have to work with new technologies and we have to take risks. We have to say this is a new form of communication and yes, it might not all be plain sailing at first, but it's a world we need to embrace. Otherwise I fear the more traditional writers - and publishers - will be left behind under layers of very eco-friendly dust.

My gut feeling is that paper books will continue to exist for a long time, but that our and subsequent generations will become more and more accepting of reading books via a screen of some kind - perhaps even with various embedded links in it so you can follow through thoughts and ideas. How about a story told from four different viewpoints, so that in every scene you can click through to another character's point of view -but only if you wish-. The whole form of the novel has never had more exciting possibilities.

A very long time ago when I was very young, in an age my six year old son does not believe existed, there was no internet. At the time I was working on an international Sunday newspaper and I said to my section editor 'Do you know what's coming? Do you realize how email alone will transform our world?' He told me not to be so foolish. He wanted facts and this internet and email business was only a fad. I was right then......

What do you think?

(Oh, and do pop over to Lyrical and see what I was rambling on about there too!)

Opening moments

2008-06-12T04:41:00.000-07:00

The strangest thing about opening this blog is I know it is mostly likely to be widely read if I am successful. Now, as I fully intend to be successful, I have to bear in mind I'm writing for the future. This poses the problem of being warm, witty and entertaining without offending anyone- ever. Fortunately, I am very nice.

Well, maybe not _very_ nice, but interesting in a slightly off beat way.

I am a mildly published author, an aspiring playwright, an ex-psychotherapist (in that I no longer run a private practice) and a creator of writing workshops such as How to Deal with Rejection (for which I am all too well qualified). I'm also the mother of two little boys and partner to he-who-shall-remain-nameless, but whose unqualified support makes my life lighter and my ambition not beyond the realms of possibility.

I can hypnotize people, read runes, shoot a bow, do several tai chi forms (both unarmed and with weapons - or used to be able to before the kids), have MS (mostly benign), can kill almost any plant by touching it, used to be a journalist (and sporadically still am) and will one day get round again to inspirational cooking and kitchen opera.

This is only a small collection of my defining features, like you, I have an awful lot of variables.

Oh, and I spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out why human beings, who are capable of such wonderful emotions, spend a large amount of time being mean to each other - or worse. The desire to figure out how other people work fuels a lot of my writing. Or perhaps this is about, more sinisterly, where else but in fiction can you make other people do exactly as you wish?

This blog will be dedicated to my writing exploits, past, present and future. And to that end, if you're also a writer I'm running two workshops at the Edinburgh International Book Festival - How to Deal with Solitary Creativity, 12 August, 11am- 12.30pm and Dealing with Rejection on August 13th same time. There are only twenty five places per workshop and they literally always sell out in days - not just mine, but all the Writing Workshop series. The book festival's website is www.edbookfest.co.uk where you can find a whole chocolate box of literary delights.

Write Forward

Burke

Poor neglected blog

Writing Plays

Euphemia in Mensa

Toddling On

Real life and fiction

Work ethics and disappointment

Startled but pleased.

Google who?

But what's it all about?

The Author as Product

Writing as Craft

An extract from A Death in the Family

What an Author wants from a Book Signing

Writing versus welding

Book Party

Book Launch

Writers don't get sick. We get busier.

But what is A Death in the Family about?

Cover for A Death in the Family

Crime Launch nears

The Purpose of a Synopsis

You are what you read

Audio Story

Writing is a terrible business

Proof-reading

Blogging Masterclass Notes

Life after blogging

I'm back and so are ebooks...

Christmas Giveaway!

Very Short Play

Breathing Space

Second Review for Make Me One with Everything

First Review for Make Me One with Everything

Royalties again

Guesting

Writing, launching and going naked again

Books up. Authors Down.

Hannu - voice of the future

Sometimes it feels as if the world has gone mad

Print Publishing- alive? dead? Or merely misunderstood?

Guesting

Is it alright to frighten the children?

Copyright - friend or foe

It's in the Stars

Novels for the time impoverished?

Priorities

Protecting our precious darlings

Edinburgh International Book Festival and Rejection

BBC article on e-books

Workshops, courses, know hows and don'ts

Twitterings

Are you intrigued by Spam?

Please learn from my mistakes - contracts

Perils of solitary creativity - things that get you away from your desk

Insight into the fate of the perfect submission

Why e-books should matter to writers

Professional Blogging - using, overuse and neglect

More on e-books

Professional Blog Writing (part 3) - We are our most annoying words

More on ipod e-book reader

E-books are go!

Procrastination versus discipline - harsh realities

Inspiration - the gaining of

Creating A Professional Blog Part 2- Credibility

Creating a Professional Blog Part 1 - tag lines and audience

Starting Out

Why writers should have babies

When do you call yourself a writer?

Guesting at Lyrical Press

The Wide White Sky

Workshops Update

What's left unsaid

Life and writing

epublishing and sticks

Opening moments