The first year review!

My first year of public writing.

(Well, it's been thirteen months... but I was a bit tired).

Well it's certainly been a mixed bag of a year!

It started with the release of The Binary Man (a cyberpunk/semi dystopian adventure) in May of 2012. The book had been languishing on my computer for two years in a seriously un-proofed form, a situation that I have only recently 100% percent rectified (thanks Kathryn!). It did (and continues to do) surprisingly well for a first book.

Bouyed with the small (and friend supported) success of the book I decided to throw myself into writing a second, which turned into Heal The Sick, Raise The Dead. This one was much more bleak in tone, dealing with an unreliable narrator during an undead outbreak. The book has received generally more favourable feedback than the Binary Man but far less sales. I have no idea why this is. It could be the subject matter. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out, though I may amend certain parts in a 'Director's Cut' style at a later date. The highlight of the project was getting a professionally produced cover from Jody Whittle of thisishoax.com. He's worked with Alan Moore, so I have too... by proxy. I have. All right, I haven't.

Next up was my Cuts of Flesh series, which I wrote as a way to tie a few different stories I've had knocking around together with the same protagonist. I decided to release it as an ongoing series despite the fact that I hadn't thought of an ending, a mistake I will NEVER repeat. I found myself tied to details that I wanted to change simply because I had already published them, and such restrictions slowed my writing to a crawl that lasted for months until an amazing holiday in Japan unclogged my idea bung holes (they exist) and I finished the last three parts at a breakneck pace.

In between I also wrote a few short stories (Just One Day, The Uncanny Mr. Bones and Words) as a way of distracting myself from Cuts of Flesh. Just One Day was the breakout hit, getting a lot of good reviews and also making me a bit of money. I had no idea that anyone would buy a short story of 12,000 words but clearly some people will!

I also decided to join in the NaNoWriMo event in November, scraping another cyberpunk novel The Real Thing from my sleep deprived mind and writing 50,000 words in November. I finally worked up the courage to look back over the draft recently and it was better than I remember so I released it on amazon. I think my exhausted mindset at the time made it seem more shaky than it was. I need to give up coffee but it calls me back every day...

The best part of the year by far has been getting to know some great people, three of which stand out above the others. 

Ethan Spier was the first real contact I made and his help and advice has been invaluable over the past year. He is a talented (and successful!) author whose book Kinesis has been at number 1 in the amazon sci fi adventure chart for an age. Check out his stuff here http://www.ethanspier.co.uk. 

Kathryn Perkins is a wonderful person who is single handedly proofing and editing my entire back catalogue as we speak. She is a great source of support and re-affirms my faith in human kindness on a daily basis. She is also a talented artist and sculptor, and her custom guitar pendants can be bought here http://frenziedsilence.com/.

Last but in no way least is George Hodan, a photographer with an amazing eye whose pictures I often use for my book covers. He has won several awards on publicdomainpictures.net and deserves all of his success and more. Check out his pictures here https://www.facebook.com/hodanpictures.

There are many others that I've got to know through twitter and facebook, far too many to name, but rest assured I read and appreciate all comments and reviews.
This year has been fraught with self doubt, frustration, joy and a lot of hours of graft. Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed it, and though I have made some mistakes I hope that I will learn from them and craft a smart marketing strategy to go along with my hours and days and weeks spent on writing.

As for the next year, I think will be a tough one, but hopefully rewarding. My goal for now is not to make money (that will be a long way off, if it ever happens) but rather to get better at constructing my stories with the aim to getting something published, indie or otherwise. To do this I need feedback. I value honesty above all else and have no problem with constructive criticism of my writing. My writing is a lifelong passion and a lifelong project. Let's see what part two brings.

Bring the bile!

A friend of mine, who has always been very supportive of my fledgling writing attempts, told me tonight that he hates something I've done. This is not just in passing... he really hates it. He loathes it. He hates every aspect of it.

This is a refreshing thing to hear, as I've found that during the past year (it's pretty much a year to the day since I released The Binary Man and began writing myself into a caffeine haze) I've received occasional lukewarm reception, occasionally good, but rarely any criticism. 

This is actually more depressing than it sounds, for two reasons. 1: I always want more feedback, and 2: there are a lot of things I've done wrong. I know it, whoever reads this occasional blog knows it... most likely anyone who stumbles across my stuff on amazon knows it. My stuff is poorly proofed by myself due to my soft brain. My plots aren't always planned well. My dialogue can be stilted and cliched. My characters can react unrealistically at times.

I'm trying to address all these things and I hope I'm slowly improving. I have met a great person who as I type is probably hard at work editing my back catalogue for the peculiar blind spots I have for my writing. I take great pains to make sure my dialogue sounds realistic without falling into the trap of actually being realistic with all of its false starts and snatched sentences. Planning plots... well, I must admit that apart from a vague outline I nearly always wing it based on how the characters fit within the setting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I could spend a lot more time redoing and refining my stuff but I admit that I am actually enjoying throwing my words out and seeing what sticks.

The point is that from a writing point of view I'm still an infant. I'm one year old. And just like a child, sometimes I need to have the rules explained. I need to know what to avoid, I need to know what bits I'm doing right so that I don't lose focus on them and I need to know when I'm about to drop off into a chasm of crap... well, that last one is a little more figurative but you get the idea.

Please, tell me which bits of my books are crap! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I want to know!

Think of me as a public project. Get involved. I'll always listen.

Gloom

Here is a short extract of the beginning of Gloom. At the moment its my project of distraction which I add chunks to as an alternative to smashing my head against the wall when whatever I should be working on is dragging. I tend to write three or four stories at a time. I have no idea if this is good or bad!

"If I cared for your opinion," said Carcaras, picking a fragment of gristle from his teeth with a fingernail as long and yellow as a sun scorched bone, "I would not have taken your arm."

The limb in question was currently sitting in a congealing disk of blood upon the polished stone writing desk, ragged pink flesh quivering in the blue flame of the candle. Mor looked down at it wistfully.

"I used that," whimpered Mor as a steady flow of brackish blood slipped down the side of his rusting metal armour and danced on the bowing timber floor.

"You used to use that," corrected Carcaras, pushing it off the desk and onto a brazier dismissively. It fizzed as the flesh began to scorch, red to brown to black.

"It isn't fair..."

"Fair?" said Carcaras, standing up so suddenly that his top hat, almost as tall as his legs were long, danced and bobbed on his sweating, greasy hair. He turned his eyes, small and fierce as the dying embers of a sun and took a long stride towards the smaller man, who shrank back and clutched his remaining hand to the ragged stump on his shoulder. Carcaras grasped the mottled top of a post that formed part of the twisted cast iron fence that lay between them, over which he’d wrenched Mor’s offending limb. It was the only physical barrier between the square piece of raised flooring that marked his office and the main floor of the Central Memorandum. It was more a gesture than anything, a separation of Carcaras from the mass of Cringes that were still hammering out moments on their typewriters despite the sanguine soaked drama that was unfolding in their midst. "Fairness is not housed within these walls, wretch. You of all people should know that. Why else would you wear that fish-bowl upon your head when all others breath freely?"

Mor started to beat his chest a little with his remaining fist, clenched up tight as a dying crab as it drummed a nervous staccato on his dented copper chest plate. He was obviously lost for words, unsure of how it had all escalated so quickly. It was all very apt, considering their location. The unforeseen was a skilled instigator of the Moments.

“I was only asking,” he said finally, daring to say little else as he stared up at Carcaras. Carcaras could feel the grey eyes that swam behind the cloudy glass of Mor’s helmet as they scanned his features, most likely in search of that elusive quality of empathy. None to be had, whelp, though if you dig far enough I may cast a grain of pity towards you, though it would surely be tethered to a hook... a need for a gesture of willingness.

“It may have seemed as little more than a question to you, but consider the line of inquiry:  you would open up the knowledge of what lies beneath the mine to the entire city of Gloom. This is not simply a petty detail of life to be mulled over whilst chewing the morning carrion, this is a knowledge of where we stand in the darkness, of what forms our bones and splices our meat. Four of us know the truth, four apart and four together. Four only. That is the number it will remain.”

Mor turned his wide globular helmet and scanned the colossal hall that surrounded them. Pinpoints of lifeless blue light glinted across the copper encased man, born from the wired stars that hung from the rusting steel rafters far above. Around him the Cringes continued in their never ending task, stabbing out words and phrases at their workstations with their misshapen hands, which had been strapped up to such an extent that their fingers had fused together in pained and bloody clumps, with the index finger permanently extended, ready to type. Most had attached blackened metal extensions directly into their flesh simply in order to maintain any semblance of a fingertip.

“ Isn't it pointless to try and hide it eternally? They all know now,” said Mor sweeping his remaining arm around the room. The noise of keyboard keys was a constant chattering that echoed onward throughout the perpetual night.

“They have not heard us, they cannot hear us,” said Carcaras as he stretched a sinew strung leg across the fence and placed a foot upon the main floor, a fractal pattern of polished black marble. His pointed leather and steel shoes were as sharp as swords at the tips, and twice as long as his feet actually were, which was the way he liked it. They were always ready to administer a sharp kick should the staff become lethargic. “Unlike some, they are completely focused on their job at hand.”

He tapped a bony fingernail against the forehead of the nearest Cringe, which rocked a little in its seat but still continued in its task with glazed, red rimmed eyes.

“It’s just as well that they are so dedicated. If they were to stop then you must surely know the result.”

Mor nodded slowly.

“Announce it, I wish to know that you truly understand.”

The copper man angled his helmet’s eye plates to the ground, perhaps to formulate the right words or perhaps to simply curse the soul of Carcaras in his own mind. Carcaras cared little either way.

“If they stop,” said Mor eventually, his voice thick with displeasure, “then the spiral stops.”

“And if the spiral stops?” pushed Carcaras, leaning down at a right angle to his legs, his thin torso barely stretching the fabric of his impossibly slim suit. His coat tails fell about his back like flaps of dead skin.

“Then the city falls into the fog and is lost,” said Mor, finishing the sentence with less obvious disrespect than when he began it. He understands. No matter his dislike for me, he understands.

“So you see why they cannot be distracted. They need no truth. As for your arm, why, simply grow a new one again. I can already see a small facsimile of a hand pushing out of the wound.”

Carcaras straightened back up, and tilted his head to look at the little man more closely. I regret what I have done. It is a strange power that you wield, small Mor.

How much is too much?

I'm now edging in on the end of my Cuts of Flesh series (at long last). I hadn't intended for the process of writing them to carry on much into the new year, but both welcome and very unwelcome changes in my life occurred between January and March which dragged my writing progress down. I didn't feel like I could face imagined troubles on top of genuine troubles.

Now I'm finally getting into a rhythm again, getting up between 3.30 and 4 am to write before the kids wake up. I've finished Gashadokuro and am half way through Eat, so after that's done there's just Rapture and then the series is complete!

I have mixed feelings about Gashadokuro. I think it would work well if it had different characters and was stand alone as it feels like it has a different beast to the other novellas in the series. Unfortunately as I'm releasing sequentially (as soon as I have written them) I'm quite tied to the plot points, which is why I'm waiting until I finish Eat to release Gashadokuro, just in case I need to tweak the continuity. Hopefully people won't consider it a 'flabby middle'. I have enough of that with my own physique!

As I'm writing Eat (which I'm pleased with so far, even if it is intensely dark), I'm finalizing the plot of Rapture, but wondering if there is too much shadow and not enough light. I think it will out-bleak Heal The Sick. The suffering of the main character Aleister Ward does however have a reasoning behind it from a plotting point of view (however flawed that reasoning might be), so hopefully it will work.

I will be bringing out a complete Cuts of Flesh for £2.99 on kindle when it is finished, along with a paperback (the cover of which I am tentatively sorting myself). 

In other news, my manuscript is still with Harper Voyager and hasn't been thrown out, so I have a glimmer of hope for publication (imagine a coin at the bottom of a four mile wide lagoon).

When Cuts of Flesh is complete I will also have to decide which of my projects to get on with next. The choice is between Clock (classic sci fi), Fangrok (Horror/Dark Fantasy), and Ojiisan (Zombies set in modern day Japan/tragic love story).

If anyone has a preference they can let me know and I may take notice ;)

Creating a believable world

This is my first blog post for several weeks, so I thought I'd post an update on what I'm up to.

It's been a tumultuous time filled with car crashes (everyone is fine), redundancy notices (I hope we'll be fine!) and the best month of sales I've ever had, quickly followed by business as usual.

I made roughly the same amount in January as I have in the previous seven months (in the U.S.) thanks to Just One Day, which seems to have bled into other books and increased their sales too. Clearly a short story is a good way of getting people engaged (business talk, hopefully I won't have to use words in such a way in my next job).

With regards to my writing, my emotions have been up and down as usual. There have been quite a few nice reviews in January, one or two bad (that of course I focussed on and lamented over), and a realisation that I didn't need to hurry my Cuts of Flesh series quite as much as I'd anticipated. I finished the first draft of Kraken around the middle of January and I'm letting it stew before I go back to it, as my head was a mess when I finished it and I have no doubt the plot has more holes than the doomed submarine in the story. I'll go back to it in a few weeks, give it a polish and release it, then have a bit of a break before I tackle Gashadokuro.

I decided to write a couple more short stories to try and emulate Just One Day's minor success. The first one, The Uncanny Mr. Bones, works quite well I think but it's an old style of story, as I tried to push for the unsettling creepiness of the uncanny over gore and explicit violence. It did a few when I had it on sale but not much since so it may be an acquired taste, or not work as well as I think it does. Words was written off the back of a dream in two days, and I tried with this one to write in a different narrative style to the usual. It again deals with the uncanny and I'll see how it goes when I put it on sale for free on March the 1st (yep, giving away a sale date!) I hope it works, but as I was writing it I felt very keenly my lack of narrative analysis skills. Was what I was writing pretentious, or did it work (as I'd hoped) as an obvious overflowering to tie in with the story premise? I have absolutely no idea. I feel like I'm driving at night with no headlights and just muddling my way through.

It was after I released Words that I thought F+#* IT! I'll write something I want to write for myself, rather than trying to be a writer (which admittedly I don't do that well at anyway, as I'm hardly pimping my books as if they are amazing which is what most indie and self published writers seem to do).

So I started Fangrok. The name is from the beginnings of a story I began to write about fifteen years ago about an exiled monarch with a face turning to stone. I've got rid of everything except the name, which now belongs to....

Well, that's for me to know!

I'm writing this one on the sly as I have little to no confidence left. Part of me just wants to give up writing and start reading again. I haven't read a book since August, splitting all of my time between family and writing. I miss books.

Anyway, I'm burbling. I'm going to focus on this for a good few months and only give out details about it that I think are definitely holding their own. Heal The Sick took me two months but I think this will take a lot longer, and maybe it should. I'll try and make it polished, or else end up with a pile of junk. Whichever I choose, there will be no sexy vampires.

 

The sickness of self promotion

Yeah, it's a picture of one of my stories. Wanna fight about it?

 

Well, I decided to release two bits of work: Sark (the second novella in my Cuts of Flesh series, a risky decision as the pacing is a little off but I want to keep people engaged, if anyone reads them), and Just One Day (no feedback yet, self proofed, so there will be errors).

The reason for this knee jerk (or just jerk) reaction was that I hadn't had a sale on any of my books for a few days, and I got the fear, I got it bad.

I've written about it before but getting sales on my books are addictive, which is unfortunate because I have to get over a huge hurdle to get any of them... and that hurdle is self promotion.

I loathe having to pimp myself out, reminding the same people time and time again of the stuff that I've written in my little study. The recommended frequency of tweeting about your free books is every hour... every hour! I don't do things I actually enjoy with such frequency! (Oh snap!)

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who shall remain nameless as I don't wish to undermine their success (he's a real, bonafide published author and narrative genius) and he was saying how much he hated it as well, and I was wondering if the emotion behind the words ever comes across during promotion. When I tell people that my book is free is it with an obvious air of desperation, or does it smack of self belief? If the latter, is this sickening? If feels sickening. Is it the same with all self published and self promoting jabronis?

I stumbled across an author's website after he started following me on Twitter and checked it out (as I sometimes do to gauge the competition... well, I say competition but most are doing a hell of a lot better than me, so it's really to see if I can nab any ideas) and I almost laughed out loud (the kids say lol? Someone actually said that in a shop once, as if it were a word... I wanted to smack the text out of their lips, but you get arrested for that.). He came across as such an arrogant, self masturbatory pin head that I almost couldn't believe the site was real. This got me thinking... do I come across in such a way on my little freebie site (still too stingy and clueless to buy a domain) whenever I talk about 'what my readers are saying' or any of the other little bits of news I dole out? Is it a necessary evil? Or is he just touching himself in public, and everyone knows it?

I have no answer to this, I'm genuinely puzzled.

Either way, I still hate self promotion, and always will.

To read more words of wisdom, subscribe to my blog! And buy my books. And mow my lawn.

EDIT: The irony that this blog post itself is self promotion is not lost on me...

Just One Day

Well, I finished my short story Just One Day (written as a little buffer as I try to get my head around the complicated plotting of Cuts Of Flesh). It works out at around 12,000 words, which I don't think is enough to justify putting on amazon (even at the cheapest price of 77p) even though I decided to knock up another cover (thanks to George Hodan for his amazing public domain images. You should all look at his site and appreciate! http://www.facebook.com/hodanpictures). Other than using that platform though, I'm at a loss how to let people read it. I could put it on my main site but I have no idea if anyone actually goes there as I have no visit counter.
I may write a few more short stories in a similar theme and bundle them together but this will then cut into time I should spend on Cuts of Flesh (Kraken is about a third of the way through).
Until I decide, I'll just keep it lurking on my hard drive...

In other news, Harper Voyager have changed how they are dealing with the submissions they received when they opened their house to unsolicited manuscripts back in October (I submitted Heal The Sick, Raise The Dead). Instead of only the successful receiving an email, now everyone will, and the longer before you receive one the better it is as they are still considering you. Now I have gone from despondency at not hearing anything to a smattering of hope at not hearing anything...

Anyway, here's a bit of Just One Day, which may yet appear somewhere on my site... or not.

The moment of almost silence was like Heaven, with the buzz of the air-conditioning as the only interloper, creeping into his senses and dragging him awake. It was just one day, one more, then it would be over. How many times had he said that? As many days as the universe had stars, except his number rose incrementally as the universe's fell away. He was sickened by the familiarity of the thought and yet he could not stop it, scratching at an itch long ago turned to infection.

The air conditioning lowered in its tone and finally shut off to envelop him in silence interspersed with distant screams. It was his alarm clock, familiar and hated. He untangled himself from the sheets and swung his feet onto the floor, before reaching down and pulling up his one piece engineering suit, carefully checking that all of the zips were done up so that there was no way a hand could get a hold and haul it open. He'd made that mistake before. One time was enough.

A slow knocking on the door made him turn his head to look, but he wasn't ready, not yet. He'd give himself a few minutes first.

He wandered over to the bathroom cubicle across the brushed metal floor, taking the time to flip the holograph of his holiday with his brother down onto the side table next to his bed, shutting off its perpetually rotating 3D image. It was only a few weeks ago yet it seemed like an age. It was an age. Or it wasn't.

The cold water on his face didn't serve to wake him up as it once had, with the heavy inevitability of his future outweighing any boost it had once had. He still went through with it though, trying to laugh back at the cosmos that was laughing at him, trying to show his resilience when all he really wanted to do was... no, there was no point going down this route again, that way led to madness. He knew that from experience. He looked into the bathroom mirror at the hangdog expression that was etched into his craggy features. Low brow, uneven eyes, steam burned skin that twisted in a web over his cheek and mouth. A face not even a mother could love. He threw a towel over his head and rubbed rigorously, fantasizing once again that he could re-arrange his features if he was aggressive enough.

When he was dry he headed into his small kitchen area and grabbed his kitbag off a chair before opening the cupboards and scooping all of the ready eats into its recesses. Couldn't miss the last supper, it was the highlight of the day.

Next he headed over to his toolbox by the door. He opened it reverentially, even rubbing the side of the battered metal container as if it were a pet, before selecting the tools he would need: his two torches, the spot welder, the signature override, the precision multi-tool, the mobile system maintenance controller, and finally his heaviest wrench, an ugly paint-stained implement that was only used on the outer bulk heads before he had given it a new calling, and a new name... 'The Viking'. Well, that was last time anyway. Today... today it would be 'The Claymore'. He slipped all of the items except the wrench (he would always need it to hand) into his kitbag before closing it and swinging it up and onto his back, slipping both straps over his shoulders so it wouldn't get in the way.

Finally he stood up, hearing the thunderous knocking reverberating around his head as much as the room as he readied the wrench in his right hand. He checked his feet, making sure he was in the right position on the floor panels adjacent to the door, before raising his right arm, wrench held high. He turned his head away, not wanting to see the first horrific event again, not with all that were to come. Instead he focussed on the wall and the small patch of condensation that was surrounding the faulty coolant pipe that ran along the ceiling. He remembered the day that he had fixed that. It hadn't changed anything.

His left arm moved up, gently depressing the door release.

The door slid back quickly and he heard the usual howl of hunger, roaring through gnashing teeth, cold bloody lips, feeling the reverberation in the floor as the corpse stumbled towards him. He swung hard, fast, at exactly the right angle to cave in the thing's temple, seeing in his mind's eye the look on its face as its head flew sharply to the right as it crumpled against the door frame. He closed his eyes and stepped out into the corridor, still not willing to give any more attention to the dead body that he needed to. He preferred to remember him as he had once been, Supervisor Gael Alvarez, a man who had once declared his love for vintage noire films, his favourite being Double Indemnity. His favourite food had been steak, rare but not bloody. His wife was named Cecilia. He had been scared of heights.

All of these facts were lost, except in the engineer's memory. He turned and went down the corridor to the right, leaving the corpse, still cold - as cold as he had been for the last few hours since he had died from the vicious bite of another of the undead - but now, mercifully, at rest.