A Farmer's Tale

 Hi Guys,

Good news, for once. I just polished off the first draft of a new book - A Farmer's Tale. So hopefully it should be out in the next month. 

 The odd thing about it is that A Farmer's Tale wasn't one of the half dozen or so books that was on my to do list. It was something that I'd half written and then put aside meaning to complete, years ago. But then a couple of weeks ago I just suddenly felt the need to pick it up again. I suppose that's just life as a pantster!

The book is an epic fantasy - yes I'm returning a little bit to my writing roots, and it's a little bit like Maverick. It's centered around a guy called Arven who really isn't a wizard at all. He's a farmer with a few spells as he regularly tells his fellow mages. There are no wizards! (Which in his world is fairly accurate. There's also no staffs, spell books or flying broomsticks either. And spells are cast instinctively with no one knowing what the words that come out of their mouths or the gestures they make, mean. They just come to them. And magic is learned more or less by copying one another.) But as he is informed by the faen (faerie) Queens when everything turns to custard along with his life, he isn't meant to know the answers. He just knows the right questions to ask!

Anyway I'm deep into the book now, losing sleep as usual as the writing bug bites. But I thought I'd let you know that there is hope on the horizon. Oh and that image up top (which I love!), I might alter it a bit but it's the cover.

So best of luck with everything guys. And as always be good or don't get caught!

Cheers, Greg.

Lessons Learned From TV Land Which Every Writer Should Know!

Hi Guys,

As a writer I am an avid tv watcher - usually when I should be writing! And in point of fact as I sit and struggle with the endless continuity problems involved in writing Mage, I have found myself watching a lot of the idiot box lately. There comes a point at which the thought of going back to a book I closed four years ago and promptly forgot about, just to fact check one tiny piece of information, becomes unbearable. A point at which I would rather hit the remote control and watch anything other than write another line.

 

There is a lesson here to be learned my fellow writers. Or actually two. The first is obviously don't start writing a sequel four years later - the pain of maintaining continuity between the old book which you've completely forgotten about and the new one, is not worth it. The second lesson for those who like me keep a companion document with all the facts and details about the book I'm writing, is of course, don't lose that damned document. It is so much easier to go through a companion document than to do endless word searches through an entire novel.

 

However, that's my pain at the moment, and completely a problem of my own making. I accept that, just as I accept that by the time Mage is completed I will in all probability have pulled out all my hair and may well have started on the cat!

 

But on the positive side, all this tv watching lately, has been useful. It has reminded me that there is wisdom in tv land. Great wisdom - and some of it even affects authors. So here - also in part because I can't stand the thought of doing any more word searches through Maverick tonight - I have pulled together a few of the most important lessons I've learned lately. Lessons that I believe we should all take to heart!

 

Lessons Learned From TV Land:

 

 

1 Never piss off a serial killer! Enough said I think. Not sure if this has any relevance to writers save of course for the obvious - don't write unflattering things about these people!
 

2 There is a subset of human beings who are literally too stupid to live. We call them reporters. These people will literally go out at night, unarmed and without any allies to meet strangers in dark parking garages when they know the people they are supposedly going to meet could be dangerous. And even within this subset there is another subset who are not only too stupid to live, but think its a virtue. We call them plucky female reporters! So the lesson for writers? Don't take up reporting as it's clear it will have a detrimental effect upon both your IQ and your life expectancy!

 

 

3 Writers are cursed. I call this Greg's law of Sodding Synchronicity. But whatever you want to call it it is a fact that in any tv series where there is a writer he will always end up at some point being attacked by whatever he writes about. If he writes about vampires, he will suffer a vampire attack. If he writes about werewolves, werewolves will attack him. Crime writers will always end up at some point embroiled in some sort of true crime – often a murder. And so on. The lesson for writers? Either write about pink fluffy bunnies or brace yourself for the consequences!

 

 

4 Never stand near the captain or other important members of a cast or crew. If possible don't even be in the same episode. The chances of suffering a horrible death increase exponentially as your rank decreases. And if you don't have a full name, you're doomed. The chances are crewman number five that you're going to die. The lesson for writers? Yeah I don't think there is one – it's just fascinating!

 

 

5 Time travel always happens. In any series once it passes a certain number of seasons, you will encounter a time traveller. It cannot be avoided. And said traveller will of course vanish leaving the main characters without evidence and scratching their heads. At much the same time Father Christmas will also appear and then vanish. So the lesson for writers? Expect strange visitors!

 

6 There are certain people in the world who thanks to their advanced hacking skills will be able to build a neutron bomb from duct tape and paper clips or carry out brain surgery by reading a few books. The lesson for writers? Get to know them – they may also be clever enough to be able to programme the damned dvd player!

 

Anyway, those are just a few of the lessons I've gleaned lately from the idiot box. No doubt more will follow in time as my hair thins and the cat heads for the hills!

 

Cheers, Greg.

 

 

 

 

Maverick to Mage - The Pain of Sequels

Hi Guys,

New topic this time, and the title says it all. Yes Maverick, three years after I published and put it away, is getting a sequel - Mage.

 

It's a long way from anywhere at the moment, with maybe 40k written. And as yet I don't know where it will end up. I've only got to the beginning which is set up five years after the events in Maverick ended. But I am excited about it. So excited that as you can see I've done a rough draft of a cover for it.

 

I'm also pulling my hair out over it! 2015 may be the year I finally go bald!

 

2014 has been a funny year so far. As those who read my posts or my books will know, I don't write series. I generally write stories with a simple beginning and an end. It's not for ideological reasons or because I have any particular objection to series. (Actually I'd quite like to write a series since they sell better!) It's simply the way my somewhat fossilized brain works. But this year I've started three follow up books. The first is to Doorways, a book which at this stage has only the working title - Doorways II. (Original I know!) Then a month or so ago I completed The Godlost Land, and immediately found myself starting its sequel - Pluto Rising. And now Mage has finally started to be written.

 

Where it will go I don't know. I never do. Nor do I have any idea how long it will take to write. As you may have gathered by now - I can never write just one book at a time.

 

Sadly this is the curse of being a pantster - a writer who writes by the seat of his pants rather than planning and plotting. I probably have more unfinished novels on my computer than any other writer in creation. And though it hurts to admit it, some of them are very close to completion. The Arcanist for example - my first venture into steampunk has forty something chapters written and only needs another five or six - essentially the end of the book. But unfortunately each time I return to it - and it is years old - I keep writing, rewriting, refining and revising those first forty some chapters and then can't work out how the book ends.

 

With Mage however, I have a different problem. I know the direction of the story. But the details elude me. It is one giant continuity puzzle. Last night for example I spent half an hour rereading Maverick, skimming through endless references to one character, just to find out what her hair colour is. Then I had to run through my old notes looking for distances in leagues between destinations. Let this be a warning to others - never simply start writing a sequel three years after finishing the first book! (If only I could listen to my own advice!)

 

But at least to all those who have sent me emails about when sequels will be written to various of my books, I can honestly say now that some are on the drawing board. And I'm hopeful that some will be finished next year.

 

Cheers, Greg,

CreateSpace and Me - The War of Words (And Images)

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd update you on how things are going in my quest for world domination (err - literary success?) Well the big news is that as of today two of my books have been approved for publishing in paper, Maverick and Alien Caller. And a third book Thief is now in the process.

It has been an epic battle getting the books through this process, in part because of my own limitations in all things computer related. But there have been some other problems arise which I did think I might mention for any of you considering taking this route.

1) PDF - CreateSpace demands PDF documents (or so I thought, however experience has proven that it ain't necessarily so). So because I don't have Acrobat, and really don't want to shell out the readies for the programme I went online to get a PDF conveter. The first one I found was Word to PDF by Abdio, which cost me forty bucks. It didn't work, producing documents that were poorly formatted and with great big gaps in words here and there. Naturally I wasn't impressed, especially when I sent off an e-mail asking for either a fix or my money back and heard nothing back. That, despite their promise to get back to me within 24 hours, was over a week ago. So that's my first DON'T of the process.

However it leads to my first DO as well. Or actually two DO's. The first is that when I reached out for help I went to the CreateSpace Community and got answers within hours. Useful answers. And the second is the answer itself a print program called Do - PDF, which was free and has worked absolutely faultlessly.

2) File sizes - for those of you like me the files you need to upload are not small, and conversion to PDF just makes them larger. Much larger. Word files doubled in size. Graphics files trebled and more through the conversion process. And if any of you are on dial up like me, that's a major pain. Fifteen megs, the size of the one piece file I created to do the book, takes an hour or so to upload. And then, as if to help me pull my hair out, CreateSpace itself kept logging me out after an hour and not saving the uploads. By the fourth time I really was screaming at the computer and threatening it with bodily harm.

However, again there is a solution, it's called cover creator. Initially I tried using it and it fell over and I couldn't understand why. It also didn't seem to have the layout I wanted, which was essentially only a bair template for the front cover, back cover and spine, all of which I had already prepared. But a more detailed search revealed that as you go through the available formats there are other layouts, and one of them 'PALM' was perfect for my needs. Better yet,the file sizes were already reduced since I could cut down my single large graphic into two pieces and throw away the spine since it was included as part of the template. And they were reduced even further because Cover Creator does not require the files to be in PDF format. JPEGs are fine. The result, one fifteen meg upload became two uploads of around two and a bit megs, and no logging out.

So for me the next DO - is cover creator.

3) There are of course fishooks in even this, and the main one is graphic sizes. With my layout being for a six by nine inch book and the requirements for the graphic being three DPI, I figured that the correct graphics should be 2700 by 1800 pixels. Silly me!

In fact the correct size for a six by nine cover is six and a quarter inches by nine and a half. They do mention this, but foolishly I ignored it. The upshot of course was that my graphics were slightly too small, and I didn't realise it. So my next DO is read the instructions for graphic file sizes and plan accordingly.

The second fishook is not mine though, unless my eyesight is really that bad and I am going colour blind! So I went through the process uploade my undersized files and it told me they were undersized, 295 DPI instead of 300. But as you go through the process little buttons turn green as you complete each step, and those buttons did turn green. So I assumed the undersizing was of no matter.

Then of course you get to the end having uploaded and twittered around with everything, a process that might take an hour or so, and you hit the button that says submit cover for approval, and I clicked it with transcendant joy. Only to go directly to hell as my cover vanished and I was told by the programme that not all parts of the process had been completed and so it was start again. The message wouldn't even tell me which parts were incomplete and of course I had no clue. After all the seven buttons had seven green colours on them which said they were complete.

So I did it again - same result. It was about then I started to consider taking to the computer with an axe! However I digress.

It turned out after careful detailed study that in fact only five of the seven buttons were green. Two were yellow. Unfortunately green is actually greenish yellow in this programme while yellow is infact yellowish green. In short they look almost identical! I am so glad that these people did not have a hand in designing traffic lights!

After that however, somewhat balder than before and hoarse from screaming at an innocent computer, things went more smoothly. Which leads me to my last DO.

There is absolutely nothing like having a paper copy of your book in your hand, and that is an experience that no reader or tablet can give you. So my final DO.

DO absolutely get a proof copy of your book sent to you in the mail.

Cheers, Greg.

Maverick Going Paperback

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd let you know what I've been doing, which is mainly to start going through the process of converting Maverick now that its been edited, into a paperback through CreateSpace.

It has been an awesome process so far. Both brilliant to see the results as they come out, and frustrating as I have to wrap my head around all sorts of problems. All the things I never thought about as a simple ebook writer. For a start I'd never heard of things called bleed and gutters. (And now I almost wish I never had!)

I've chosen the size six by nine for the book since it's rather long. This is very slightly larger than a standard paperback of eight and a half by five, but when I did my first PDF conversion of the text it came out at 850 pages. In this new format it's only 550 pages, which makes a huge difference in price and the sheer size of the book.

Above you can see the first version of the cover, (reduced in size since I'm on dial up and the time to upload a four meg file is extraordinary - worse if the farmer across the way has his electric fence running!) I'm pleased with it, though will probably do some tweeking when the proof arrives in the mail. I'm a natural tweeker!

My plans for the coming weeks are to get the proof and finish the process for publishing Maverick, and also to put out Alien on the Kindle and then start the process of converting that to paper as well. Over the rest of the year most of my other novels should follow - though I may be bald by then.

Lastly a very bad fantasy joke: Did you hear the one about the wizard who turned his car into a garage?!

Cheers, Greg.

Maverick Revised

Hi guys,

Just a short note to let you know what I've been doing these past few weeks. In a word editing. (Actually it's probably the most horrible word in any author's vocabulary! It is mine anyway.)

But the good news is that it comes with a purpose, and that purpose is to get some of my books into paper form (yes I know many of you younger people may not remember what that is any more!), through CreateSpace.

So so far this year both Thief and Maverick have been through extensive revisions and given new covers in preparation for the transition, and more will follow. However for those who've read them and want something new, currently my long suffering editor (sister) is working on the first edit of the next book off the blocks this year, Alien. I hope to have that out on the Kindle in the next few weeks.

In the mean time, because I may be the worst (most unreliable) blogger in history and feel the need to apologise - again, I'll leave you with an even worse joke.

A priest, a nun, a monk and a bishop walk into a bar.
The bartender looks up at them and says - 'This is a joke right?!'

Cheers, Greg.

Sidetracked again!

Ooops! I've been a bad bad boy.

I was supposed to be editing Pawn as you know, but somewhere along the way I got side tracked, and instead created a new cover for Maverick.

I liked the old one, it seemed moody and magical and woodsy which was what I was aiming for. But I did get some feedback that it was too dark and hard to make things out. So hopefully this new one is more appealing.

As usual the three photo's used in it are from the Photo Morgue, I used Paint and Photoscape to edit the details, and then the magical effect is from a program I found on line called Dreamlight Photo Editor.

Still it's back to editing now.

Cheers, Greg.