I’m the first to agree that ‘A Wizard’s Tears’ is not the best book in the world.

From its humble beginnings on pen and paper (when I was 16 years old), the finished product, released in 2005 (1^st edition), holds a plethora of issues:  the characters aren’t fully rounded, the ending is rushed, there’s an overpowering sex scene that doesn’t fit well in the book, plot holes…I could go on!

As such, it’s received very mixed reviews by audiences. Certainly, some of the reviews on Amazon US are particularly scathing (have a read for yourself).

I used to let these get to me. As a budding author, releasing a debut fantasy novel was always going to be a tall order, but back then, when I was younger and inexperienced, I thought my books could do no wrong. Criticism hurt back then, but not any more.

Many reviews, if they’re negative, can at least point to the reasons why the reviewer feels your work is lacking. These sorts of reviews are invaluable in the learning process of how to construct a better book.  I actively seek out such reviews, because it is revealed what the elements of the book are that make it…well, not so great. If more than one person says the same thing (such as your characters being thin and without substance) then you know what you have to work on.

Other bad reviews – the ones that basically are just filled with bile and vehement hatred – I can laugh at and discard. Unless the reviewer gives a good, structured narrative on why the book “sucked”, simply saying so is a matter of opinion, their prerogative of course, rather than fact, with no hard evidence to back up the claim.

I want to write this blog so that if any new authors are out there reading it, and they get disheartened by bad reviews, don’t let them get to you. At best, they can tell you things about your book you may have overlooked (or not even thought of). At worst, they can be ignored as someone simply having a rant. And, if you get mixed reviews, like I have with ‘A Wizard’s Tears’, you’ll also know that you have people who really enjoyed it, and this puts things in perspective. Even the most amazing literary greats get bad reviews. Not everyone likes Lord of the Rings, after all, but it’s not doing too badly despite this.

Keep at it, hone the skill; make the next book better! That’s my mantra, and I can only build on what’s gone before. I’ll never give up trying to write that ‘perfect’ book, and I’m my own worst critic, so I could be writing for an inordinate amount of time. However, remembering you’ve written a book (or several), is a pretty fine achievement, no matter how ‘good’ those books are perceived to be.  Give yourself a pat on the back, smile, and crack on with the next!

Happy new year to all my followers online!

For my first blog post of the year, I’d like to talk about the different structures I’ve used for writing my books. I’m sure most authors have their own way of doing things (quite right, too) and none of this blog is a ‘how to’ guide, it’s just a statement of what I normally do.

I say normally, because at the moment I’m writing a book in a very hap-hazard fashion (The Black Tree). I’m writing this one almost ‘on the hoof’ as I’m racing towards a deadline of March 2013 to finish this for the Safe Space Write-a-thon charity project.  It’s been a real joy to write this way, and the story has gone from tangent to tangent with whatever thought processes I had on a given day. I wouldn’t particularly recommend this way to write a book, but at the end of the day, it’s been huge fun and what’s fun tends to come across in the finished product. I’m proud of the achievement of writing 52,600 words in 6 months (almost there with The Black Tree, think I’m going to make it) and I wanted to do this project, not just to raise funds for Safe Space, but to challenge myself, just to see if I could do it.

However, my normal structure is a bit more strict than this. After the initial idea of a book (which is normally based around a theme – for example, my forthcoming title The Dark Shores is all about conscience), I then build up a main character. This involves some time in working out the background of the character, where they’ve come from, what they look like, what they are hoping to achieve, and where they currently are at the beginning of the book.  I then progress my book with my character, changing the way they think/act over the period of the novel so that at the end of the book, as well as the reader having undergone a journey, the character has too – and ends up completely different to when they started off!

Once I’ve worked out my characters, I then flesh out a summary of what the book wants to achieve (basically, what am I trying to say about the theme I’ve picked), and then work on chapter summaries, which showcase all the main events that happen, chapter by chapter.

Of course, along the way in this initial work, and, indeed, writing the first draft of a book, I get new ideas, or decide some of my earlier ideas aren’t good enough, or don’t fit with the overall story, so tweaks and changes do happen, but overall, the structure and bones of the story are adhered to.

What I do now (and this is why The Dark Shores is taking a long time to finish) is to go over my first draft, reading and re-reading it, and editing the book so that it flows better, bits that are integral to the plot are added, or embellished, and other things that are detrimental to the plot or just plain silly are removed. Currently, with The Dark Shores, I’m in this part of the process. I’ve added a lot more to it, and made it a lot more interesting as a result. It reads well (in my view) and when it will be completed I’ll know I’ve written the best thing I could have done at the time.

It’ll be interesting for me to compare The Black Tree with The Dark Shores, compare the different structures that made up the books, and see which one readers prefer! Who knows? If I find The Black Tree wins then perhaps my whole method of creating books might have to change…

As we near the winter season, I’m taking some time to reflect on recent events regarding my booksales and writing in general. I’ve not as actively promoted myself this year as I would have liked, and I’m keen in 2013 to attend more book/craft fairs wherever possible, with my table of books, and meet more people, sell some books and generally become more of a writer.  The full-time job takes its toll, and if I’m going to become a serious writer in the future, as opposed to writing as a part-time hobby, then I’m going to have to make some changes.

Positively, I feel I’ve had a really good year – I’ve sold double what I sold in 2011, I’ve met some really exciting and interesting new people through events as part of the Fife Book Fair Association (Create at Cloud in Dunfermline is the most notable venue, where I read some poetry for the first time to an audience), and also through the book fairs/craft fairs I’ve done this year; I intend to build on this in 2013.

Furthermore, I’m currently writing two books: The Black Tree (a supernatural horror) and The Dark Shores (my second fantasy novel). I fully expect both to be ready in 2013 and produced in some form or another. The Black Tree is a very exciting project in that I’m speed-writing it to finish it by around March next year for charity, so that’ll be the first one out.

Despite some of the events not having a great turn out of people, and not really selling all that many books face to face (the majority of my sales this year have been e-books on Amazon), I’m not disheartened. The pleasure of meeting like minded people, of having interesting conversations and visiting new places has more than made up for lack of sales. I take each fair as a learning opportunity, to address what failings there were and to discover new places, new ways to promote, advertise, and generally market my work and that of others.

I’m intending to consolidate my presence inFifenext year, but also to look further afield. Places likeEdinburgh,Dundee, Perthshire, right on my doorstep, are beckoning. There is such a wealth of artistic and creative talent in Scotland, not just authors, but painters, artists, musicians – it is the perfect place to springboard my own efforts. I thank all of those who I’ve met this year for the fantastic support, and, with all the ideas I’ve got brewing, 2013 is going to be even more exciting than this one!

Hi all!

I’ve been on a bit of a journey lately with my writing. I have found writing my 2^nd novel ‘The Dark Shores’ really tough for most of the year.  In fact, ever since the 1^st draft got written, the refining process and reading it back and changing it and trying to make it better has been one of the most difficult projects I’ve done. I’ve also found myself many times, scratching my head, wondering what on earth I’m going to write, or how on earth can I move the story onward.  Even more frustrating, parts of the 1^st draft were very disjointed and didn’t quite fit, and there were glaring continuity errors with characters, so all of this needed to be re-written.

I’ve always blamed time for all of this: “I don’t have time to write”, “I’m too busy doing my household chores, or my main day to day job,” etc. Well, I can tell you now – what a load of nonsense!  The majority do have time for hobbies, don’t they? I used to play tennis and badminton every week, I found time to go and have a game. So why not writing?  The mental block that comes from it is more my mind – subconsciously – telling me things like “Oh, who’s going to read it anyway, what’s the point?”, “That chapter is rubbish, you’ll never get it any good” etc. It’s amazing how the subconscious can influence what you do in your conscious isn’t it?

I’ve been reading a lot more lately, and can really recommend two books that have, for want of being dramatic, changed my life!  They are ‘The Artist’s Way’ and ‘Being Happy’.  The former is a course for recovering creativity that is lurking in everyone’s soul, and isn’t simply for authors, but can be applied to anyone. The main thing that has come out from it is that each morning, I’m supposed to do what’s called ‘morning pages’. Basically, three pages of what’s in my mind at the time, out there, thrown onto blank pages, and to write it all by hand. This seemed like a chore; nay, it WAS a chore to start with, but now I wouldn’t do without my morning pages. I look forward to doing them; to greeting blank pages without the previous worry.  I can write – I can write what I want, and so I do.  The morning pages don’t have to be structured, edited, or refined – they just are.

Another positive coming from them, as well as doing writing every day, is that all those problems and issues niggling your mind, your subconscious telling you what you can and can’t do – these come out on the page.  And believe me, once you’ve written the same problem several times over, you begin to question why the problem is still there; what’s really bugging you, what’s really keeping your mind focused on it. And then you let it go – simple, but effective. It frees your mind…

 …which in turn I’m now filling with more imagination, creativity and ideas than ever before, and this has shown on my days when I’ve sat down to write my book.  It’s flowing now, it’s coming together, the characters are more rounded, the story is more defined – and, most importantly of all, it’s not a chore – it’s an enjoyable pastime.

So, I feel great, the book is coming and will be finished sooner rather than later, and I’ve already thought of an idea for a new book – which I’ll talk about next month, because the way I’m doing it is quite exciting…

That’s all for now   Thanks for reading!

As my fan base will know, I’m currently working on my second fantasy novel: ‘The Dark Shores’. When I first conceived of the idea, it was 2006, a year after ‘A Wizard’s Tears’ had been finished and released. Now, here we are in 2012, 6 years later, and where is my second novel? It’s sitting inside of a 2^nd draft, with scribbles and red marks all over it.

I’d like to put a timescale on myself. I’d like to say I’ll finish the 2^nd draft this year and it’ll be released next. I used to do this – impose the power of time onto my work. Eventually, I just have to finish it, get it out there.  I mean, I suppose, I could release it now, in 1^st draft form. I finished it last year – so why am I still tinkering around with it, editing pages, deleting passages, adding new passages (even chapters) into it?

I’ve learned a lot from the days of ‘A Wizard’s Tears’. I’m proud of that first novel; but it’s exactly that – a debut, a dipping of a toe in the writer’s pond, just to see what I could achieve. And it’s achieved more than I thought it could, and I’m glad to have gotten the ‘first one’ out there, for people to read. But looking back at it now, I’d have written it differently. I’d have written it better. I like certain passages of the book, I do, and there’s a lot of hidden depth and meaning in its pages, which is something I like to do – put in layers, so to speak. But there are bits of it that make me cringe (cue the unwieldy sex scene for one example), and it’s definitely rushed at the end, as if in the dying moments of writing it, I just wanted the darn thing done because I’d spent years on it.

All different now. I’m not going to release ‘The Dark Shores’ until I’m happy with it; until I’ve poured in every possible atom of love and spirit that I possess into it. It will make it a better book. It will make it a longer book, without a rushed ending. It will have better characters, and better scenes. It will be me. 

I think it is very important to write a 1^st draft, just organically, just get the words down, hap-hazardly, paragraph by paragraph. The story is there. It’s out. It’s on the page. Then it’s important to refine, to go through it, to look for words that aren’t needed, to cross out those silly adverbs or repeated words (goodness, just how many times had I used the word ‘murmur’ in ‘A Wizard’s Tears’?!) It needs to be proof-read, and given to others to proof-read it also, and honed, and chiselled at, until it becomes that work of art it so wants to be, and what other people want it to be!

So, although I apologise to my fans for the delay of 6 years (although, incidentally, one or two of those years I’d barely written a word of the book due to other commitments – confound the full-time job!), it’ll be worth the wait. And even if the book doesn’t meet expectations, gets bad press/reviews, at least I will know it’s how I meant for it to be, and in my own opinion will be the best thing I could do at the time. That process, more than anything, is reward enough.

Welcome to my 3^rd blog post in my continued ‘monthly’ blogs.  I’m sticking to the schedule so far, are you impressed? I certainly am!

The past few weeks have been very thought-provoking for me.  As I continue writing ‘The Dark Shores’ (second draft) and changing huge chunks of the story here and there, I wonder to myself: why am I even doing such a huge project?  Ok, it will satisfy my fan-base as they’ve been waiting on a sequel to ‘A Wizard’s Tears’ for close to 7 years now, but really, genuinely, why do I do it?  Why does anybody write?  What purpose does it serve?

There have been times I’ve thought about stopping.  I’ve got plenty of other things to fill my time, that’s for sure – there are not enough hours in the day, generally.  Do people really need another fantasy book clogging up their bookshelf?  Well, I suppose that depends on the owner of the bookshelf.  People do like to collect things, and I’m no different – I enjoy looking at my bookcases at home and seeing all the books I’ve read (or yet to read).

Readingis certainly an enjoyable pastime, so maybe that’s all the reasons I need – it’s entertainment.  Entertaining for me to craft something, certainly satisfying to complete a book, and worthwhile to see others reading it (and even better, liking it!)  There’s a lot of genuine ‘good vibes’ about all of that.  So is that why I write? Well, partly.

The other side of it, in my mind, is that I’m trying to say something.  For years it’s tough for the likes of me to get my point of view across, out there in the real world, my ideas on this world and humanity and all that ensues can be pretty off the wall at times, so maybe the only way I’m going to get it out is to put it on paper.  Heck, I’m still learning about life myself…don’t think I’ll ever truly figure it out.  So I write to explore my feelings, and those of others, and to actually make a book mean something.  I always put a theme into my books, some hidden (or, blatantly obvious to some) messages that I hope will strike a chord with the reader, or make the reader think about something new, a way of looking at things they never did before, perhaps.  This is my main reason for writing.

‘TheDark Shores’ is a story all about conscience: what it means to make decisions that can affect everything in your life.  Where does conscience come from?  Why do some of us have strong urges to ‘do the right thing’, and others have a total lack of regard for rules/laws and prefer to just do what they want to do, and to hell with the consequences?  That’s what makes the work interesting, the way I try to put layers in it, challenge my own writing, strive to make things better and bolder than before.  It’s not just a story…but then, to those reading it, it simply will be, and there’s no harm in that.

I’d be interested to get feedback from authors on ‘why they write’; I’m sure we all have different and unique reasons for doing so.  The good thing is that from all this creativity there comes some fascinating stories, and where would we be without a good story, mmm?

My first poetry book, ‘Soul Shadows’ was written during a three year period when I suffered from deep depression.  Looking back, I can clearly see the triggers for my depression; redundancy, the end of a long-term relationship, my family moving 400 miles away.  I became profoundly aware of how ‘alone’ I was, and it was the loneliness I found hardest to cope with.  Not just the loneliness that comes from a feeling of physical isolation, but much more the mental loneliness.  There was a bit inside me that felt ‘well, nobody understands me and nobody listens to me’.  Friends and family tried their best to be supportive but nothing they could say to me helped with that feeling inside my head of being completely misunderstood.  Depression was such an enigma, an unknown illness, a strange concoction of mental anxiety, and it was to be feared.

It took a long time, a lot of self discovery and soul searching to recover, but I made it.  It was only when I hit rock bottom that I took the time to analyse every facet of my being and life.  I found my deepest, darkest fears and confronted them, finding ways to release myself from their hold.

Writing was an invaluable tool in my recovery.  I started jotting down how I felt, how I really felt, and suddenly there it was, on the page staring back at me…my very first poem, ‘Fragile’.  Suddenly I had expressed just how vulnerable I was feeling, in words and self-understanding that had previously eluded me. The words of my poem showed me that I was feeling just as many people feel from time to time, and now those feelings seemed more normal, more human.  I was no different to millions of others. This connection, then, this link to other people in the human race, gave some comfort, that I wasn’t truly alone.

And so I wrote some more, and some more, and at my worst moments, the times when I thought it would be easier just to end it all, I wrote.  My first poetry book, Soul Shadows, was born. I find it an uncomfortable book to read in one sitting. There is so much emotion and pain contained in its pages; the poems became containers for all the disturbing thoughts that besieged me. When I read lines now like ‘Dark is the cosmos…’, ‘I am lost in the dark’ and ‘There’s a spirit here, struggling to get out from the dark’, I can really sense the struggle I was having, to see any light or hope in my life, at the time when I was writing a particular poem.

I then made the decision to publish Soul Shadows, although what possessed me to do so at such a time remains a mystery, perhaps I wanted everyone to read it and finally understand how I felt.  To my surprise, people wrote reviews complimenting its honesty, telling me that they felt some resonance, some relatable emotion in themselves that they could link the poems to, and that they were comforted to see someone else in a similar position to theirs. That, then, was its greatest accomplishment.  I had, inadvertently, brought people together through my poetry.

I would dearly like other people who are suffering depression to seek out their soul, and to dump their own ‘soul shadows’ onto paper, in the hope that it helps them in the same way that it did me.

I have come to think of depression as a part of our journey through life which should not be feared; it is a state of mind, and people can and do change their minds daily. There are always new days, new moments of transition, new wonders to discover, internally and externally. Embrace life, for that is all we have.

And so, I feel the time is right to release the book again, to benefit a charity that I wish I had found when I was depressed.  The Maytree Respite Centre, ‘a sanctuary for the suicidal’ (http://www.maytree.org.uk/) recently saved someone close to me, and I am donating money raised from sales of Soul Shadows to support their work.   All copies of Soul Shadows sold through this site will be signed, and contain a bonus poem (one of hope) inside the back cover. 100% of all profit from sales will be donated to Maytree.

You can choose the basic price of £6.99, or if you would like to donate more, there are the £11.99 or the £16.99 buttons below (adding £5 or £10 donation to the book price).  

Thanks for your support!

Doodle credit: Helen Harrop

Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover) - £6.99
Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover + £5 extra donation) - £11.99
Soul Shadows book (signed with special poem inside back cover + £10 extra donation) - £16.99

Welcome to my first blog on my new blog page.  I am hoping to do articles each month (I figured this would be an achievable target), alongside my weekly poems on the poetry page of this site, so we shall see how this goes…

…first up, I felt it was time to write a small article on e-books.  Currently I have four of my books available as e-books via Amazon Kindle, and these are certainly selling more than their paperback counterparts, something that would have been unheard of a year or two ago. So, are e-books the future of publishing? Are those old paperbacks resigned to remain on a dusty shelf somewhere, or fall into the regions of car boots and charity shops?

Books in the high street seem to almost have disappeared.  There are only a handful of independent bookshops these days, and even Waterstones and WH Smith in theUKseem to have reduced stocks, and are more inclined to promote celebrity biographies, cookery books, travel guides, cards etc. rather than works of fiction.  Even then it’s mainly the bestsellers, or trends at the time (like the Twilight series spawning hundreds of teenage vampire novels).

Certainly, in the realm of the fantasy genre, my local Waterstones has a small section compared to bookshops in my youth, and most of these are the well known authors, and I wonder if publishing firms are staying with the authors they know will sell.  Trying to get published mainstream as a new author is all but impossible these days, even with an agent.  There also seems to be more books and new authors out there these days, writing away, but that I believe is because it’s now easier to publish your work yourself.  Looking at the new books on Kindle on Amazon each month, hundreds of new titles appear.  E-books is now an easy and viable option to get that manuscript off the hard drive and into people’s e-book devices, at minimal cost.

I still do not own an e-book reader, and enjoy reading an actual book. However, I know many people who do own a Kindle, who love to read on the train, or on holiday, and find using a screen to flick through text just as good as reading on paper.

It still remains unclear what will happen to the published paperback, but I do feel that if authors don’t embrace technology, then they will lose out on a lot of sales and marketing opportunities, and they will also miss out on getting their work to readers, which, after all, is the overall aim of the author (and if it isn’t, well, what is the point?)

I’d be very interested to hear from other authors on what they feel about e-books. For my part, I’ll embrace this way to promote my work, but I’ll still be producing my own books as paperbacks.  I’m still hesitant to let them go for good!