Seeing your novel in real life!

Bit of a weird one today, but have you ever found yourself inside a real life version of your novel, after you've actually written it?

Now, we writers, odd-bods that we are, all live for incredibly long periods of time inside the worlds we have imagined. We know the characters as if they are real people (or should do), we know the locations, walk around them in our sleep, experience every development in the story as if they're actually happening to us. This next bit depends on what you're writing: if you're scribbling down your biography or basing your story firmly in the real world around you, then you see those places all the time, you know the physicality of them, you know the atmosphere, can breathe it in. If, however, you are working in fantasy like myself, if the geography of your tale is a construct of part-truth and part-make-believe, then you can't really have a wander round, getting a feel for the location.

However, I did just that.

Sometimes in life you find yourself doing a double-take.

This scene caused me a triple.

You simply don't expect it. I certainly wasn't out looking for it.

All the images in this post are, to me, a real-world representation of Daisy Hill in my new novel A Graveyard Visible. The hill in the book is a lot steeper than this one, but this idea of burials all the way up the gradient, of a graveyard that isn't flat but on levels ever-upwards, is the notion that spurred the writing of the novel in the first place. I feel like I've seen the inspiration long after the writing is done.

I'm unlikely to see my first novel Macadamian Pliers in reality. It's based in a made-up American town. I don't live in America, I have yet to visit. and this restricts my chances of seeing anything resembling Cherry Raine's haunted home town. Mac Pliers is based in part on places I have actually been to (isn't everything we write?), Gateshead and Chesterfield are incredibly hilly in parts.

Seeing Daisy Hill, though... it was like the story was saying, We were here all along. It all really happened to us. All you did was report it. And we'll be here when you're gone. 

I wonder what I might have written if I'd seen this place first.

Caleb's up there somewhere, getting into

serious trouble.

This is in Bowness, on Lake Windermere. We were there for a few days, to celebrate a birthday, to get away from the mania of normal life. What a beautiful place it is, so much so that you will want to walk and walk and carry on simply so you can see more of it. There's a joy that all of this exists, and a pain that I haven't seen more of it, and that one day I won't be able to see any of it at all.

I love the place. The calm of the water, the hills and peaks, the morning mists that shroud the swooping ranks of trees... At no point do you feel any temptation to check social media or scan through a million nonsense news stories (the pathetic excuses for reporting that are considered newsworthy these days show how pathetic modern times are). I had no clue for three days that Syria had been bombed. I was probably better off not knowing. Such was my delight at connecting so thoroughly with nature and disconnecting so completely with the society I loathe, that I slipped into a pretty severe funk upon return to real life. Isn't this why we go off to our other worlds, because we deem them better than this one? Windermere is better than the real world, much better. And it's real. It's there. Go to it. Bring a camera, turn off your Wi-Fi, turn off your data, do yourself a favour while you can.

The railings that Caleb peers through,

convinced they're expanding.

The timing is so weird too. Two weeks before A Graveyard Visible's release date of 27th April 2018. So close to that moment when the book is finally out there for readers to either love or hate or be completely confused by (which is exactly what's been happening in the pre-release reviews). Serendipity? Sure, why not? It certainly made me rethink my attitude towards the novel. With everything going on regarding reviews during the lead up to release, I've found myself feeling very distant from the work, unsure of what it is, what it represents, why I wrote it in the first place. There are those who can't finish it. There are those who can't understand why it's been slated. There are those who think the writing is awful. There are those who think it beautiful, lyrical. Between all these sharply opposed opinions, I've lost my way. In this moment, in Windermere, when I wasn't looking at all, my book came to find me. That graveyard, that boy, that girl, they're a part of me, no matter what. Discovering them, writing them, everything that came after, then finally finding the graveyard is real... It's been an adventure like none other.

I know that there's no other book like it. The sadness inside its pages, the yearning for acceptance... It is the horror of things coming to an end. It's my attempt to put my greatest fears into words. Whether the reader is capable of deciphering the code... That is up to them. I have to accept what it is, and move on.

But I'm sure glad I saw Daisy Hill for real. Without that, I would have turned my back on my work for good.

Back home, I've taken to watching 4K videos on Youtube of people walking around lakes and driving scenic routes while trying to work out how on earth to promote this book before it's too late. These videos tend to be around four hours long. Yes, it's loopy, but I can't tell you how relaxing it is, and it beats the hell out of Netflix, evil Facebook, and (non) news.

A Graveyard Visible, out 27th April 2018

Go get my book. It's all real, it all actually happened. Honest.

Laters.

Is it okay to write two novels at once?

Back to writery stuff about writering.

I've gone back and forth about this question over the years. A long time ago I used to write two novels (unrelated) in parallel, but as none of those have ever seen the light of day, it seemed safe to assume that this was not the world's greatest writing technique. I enjoyed it and got plenty done... but you've never heard of Dog Dinner, have you? No. And yes, that is a bad title. What of it?

We all have our different writing styles, favourite places to be, our preferences regarding paper or word processor, which underpants we should have on. But, should you ever take on two projects at once?

For clarification, I'm not talking about the writing of a series of books all in one go. If you plan from the outset to do a trilogy or whatever, bang 'em all out from the outset, don't pause. I wrote a sequel to Macadamian Pliers, but only after writing a couple of other books first, and man was that a task, so difficult to pick the threads up (and if people think A Graveyard Visible is dark, I'd love to dish them up a slice of Mac 2). What I'm discussing here is two completely separate stories with no characters or settings in common.

The closest I've ever come in the last 5 or 6 years to writing two stories at once would be during the creation of my latest novel A Graveyard Visible, which is currently undergoing an incredibly interesting pre-release process of review gathering - that's code for 'the reviews I'm getting are all over the place'. Halfway through, I stopped writing it. Couldn't go any further. It was dead. Tens of thousands of words in, I buried it (only ever happened once before, with a pirate story called Shanty for the Soulless which I'm currently considering for revival). So, after a period of glumness (we writers a miserable bunch of bastards) I got stuck into a new novel. I was most of the way through that when A Graveyard Visible dug itself back out of its admittedly shallow grave (one of those big light-bulb moments came out of nowhere - you gotta love 'em) and I hammered on until the end.

This is what you want - 

a bloody big idea

Since all of those shenanigans, I've finished another novel called Ten Doors Down (about a girl who breaks her phone and has to take on an incredibly strange job in order to save for another), and started my current project, Polka. It's about pigs. Oh yeah, a city of them. A whole society of pigs, a complete world, and everything a world is made of. It's become way bigger than I expected. I'm usually pretty good at getting a novel wrapped up in 80k or under, but with Polka and his personal journey I'm sailing towards eighty thousand words pretty rapidly and the middle is nowhere in sight. Now, I think the realisation of that fact freaked me out. There's a lot of work to do, and everything has to remain consistent. Polka, the titular pig, has led a small life in the walled (and guarded) city when we meet him in the first chapter, but when there's a dramatic change at the library where he works and a rebellious friend returns, his whole world flips and he starts to see what's on the other side. It's far more political than anything else I've written. It's about the disconnect between politicians and the people they govern. It's about loss, how large the pain can feel and yet how small it can seem to the world around you. It's about personal empowerment. It's about what a drop can do to an ocean. In some respects, 'Polka' is almost a playground for me to grab hold of a lot of the issues that affect me, to turn them round and hold them up in new lights.

Two months ago, it slowed to a near-stop. Not a complete halt, mind you. There were still a few words trickling onto the page. This was not a catastrophe of A Graveyard Visible proportions. The story was still there, and I knew where I was heading (or at least a had a piece of the map). But the weight of it...

We writers are always looking 

for that ray of hope.

The usual stuff - a change of activity, leaving it alone for a day or two, going for a walk, trying a chapter from a new angle - wasn't really giving me the bump start I needed. The only thing for it was a holiday. Not merely a real-life trip away for me (although by all the known gods I love getting away somewhere new). I had to get myself off to a new world.

The sneakiest and peakiest sneak-peak

of Flip.

The new one's called Flip (this flipping is a lot more literal than Polka's series of revelations), and for now I won't say much more, other than there's humans, and magic, and monsters. Starting a new story is always brilliant, and even though I'd had a false start with this one back in NaNoWriMo, a second attempt at the start of February went very quickly indeed, and I got a lot done (for me, anyway) in a short space of time. Now, I had a bit of a concern here. Writing lots is great, but what if I just kept writing Flip, and Polka died? What if I couldn't go back? The thing is, I was writing again, the energy was back, and as soon as I returned to Polka, the pages started flowing again.

Now, if they were both set in similar human fantasy worlds, and both had magic, and both had horror elements, and both were from the same point of view, then I don't think this would be feasible. There would be bleed between the two pieces. There would be forgetfulness, there would be a stylistic blur, and it would simply become too difficult. However, the fact that Polka and Flip are so very different actually helps me bounce from one to the other. Flip may never be finished. But if it's only reason to exist is to help me get to the end of Polka, then I will be forever grateful.

To conclude, I think it's possible to pull off this two novels at once thing... but only if both stories are very different. There can be little-to-no cross-over in regards of character type, theme or, if possible, style. Otherwise, everything could blend together and you'll end up with two indistinct piles of mess.

The moral here? Go on holiday, real or imagined. It's good for you.

Laters.

P.S. A Graveyard Visible is out soon - April 27th 2018. The horror novel that reviewers love to love, or love to hate. Go pre-order it now. The dead won't wait much longer...

Bad review, what do I do?

I got a couple of bad reviews, and now I'm in freefall and I don't know what to do.

This is a particularly painful post, and I've thought long and hard whether to publish it. I promised myself, however, that if I wrote a blog then I would be honest about the writing journey. With that in mind, this is going to be a very honest post, possibly to the detriment of my unreleased book. But what can you do? The bloody reviews are out there now. No hiding those.

Way back when I started this bloody thing,

I never thought it would be so much trouble.

It all seemed like a pretty good idea. New book A Graveyard Visible is due for release at the end of April, and I was feeling confident about it, thought it was about as good a piece of work as I could put together (after all, I sent it to a publisher, and they accepted it, so, you know...) Why not drum up a bit of interest for my YA horror nice and early? I stumbled upon a scheme to garner a bunch of reviews. So I went for it.

Yeah. Pretty good idea.

First review came in. I checked it out nervously. It was great:

'This book goes from “good” to “great” to “I can’t put this book down until I have finished it”. If you want creepy, edge-of-your-seat page turner, this is for you!'

In the spirit of honesty, then, here are some direct quotes from the negative reviews, and this is the stuff that broke my heart:

'Ok, I did not get this book at all. I love suspense and horror, but this was a mangled mess of confusion. The alternating third person perspective and stream of consciousness just left me confused. This would have been a DNF for me except I felt guilty...'

And even worse:

'The story started off strong and I was captivated by the idea of what could be happening within the graveyard. The narrative soon became really difficult to follow. Each chapter switched between many characters’ perspectives and it often took me reading a paragraph or two to understand which character I was reading about.
This was a difficult book for me to get through. I ended up quitting with only 70 pages left because I was just uninterested and not invested in the story. '

Never in my life thought I'd write a novel people didn't want to finish! I can't imagine a review being any worse.

This is what my cat thinks of the whole situation.

Again, being honest, I got defensive when I read these. When you've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours creating something you believe in, anyone would get a tad bristly, I suppose. So let's get the stroppy author bit out of the way. The main beef here seemed to be the multiple perspectives. But what's wrong with that? I whined. It's hardly the first novel to have multiple bloody viewpoints. It's standard stuff for telling big tales! It's meant to give proceedings a touch of the ole epic scope. It keeps the story fresh, lends a bit of unpredictability to how it all unfolds.

Look, there's not that many viewpoints! There's our two leads Caleb and Misha, some flashback stuff (which is all in italics, by the way), some very brief stuff with the grandparents, and some short sequences with the villain of the piece, and he's really obvious because he has all these dark thoughts 'n that. That's it. Caleb is a very normal boy, Misha is a bit odd, it's all signposted quite clearly.

I've read a ton of books that switch viewpoints. Grab one of Stephen King's bigger epics - The Stand, Under The Dome - and you'll be switching all over the place. I don't think it's that hard to keep up in my novel. Really I don't. Maybe I'm too close to the story though. After all, it did take longer than usual and more effort to get it done. Maybe I've buggered it up far more than I think.

Anyhoo, my defense is all well and good... but so far two readers don't buy it. That there is bad news, bro.
It could be that multiple viewpoints just wasn't to these readers' tastes. Having two of them say the same thing though? Oh man...

Like I said at the beginning, I don't know what to do. It feels like the damn book's been murdered before it's anywhere near release. Is it fixable? Do I dare get more reviews? I have to, in the hope I can get some balance, get a few good ones in, so that at least it looks like a divisive novel. That would be a good sell, the book that you either love or hate. But... what if more reviewers hate it? What if that's all AGV gets? I don't know what to do....

Oh yeah, I'm comfort eating these days. You wanna see how big I can get? Keep posting them bad reviews, guys. Reckon I could end up a whopper.

Laters.

Love it or hate it, They'll come after you anyway.

Pre-order here. Release date 27th April 2018

#nanowrimo? Nanonono

It really isn't a good idea.

No matter which way I look at it, no matter how I hold it up to the light and turn it this way and that, I can't see what the point is of #nanowrimo.

If you're here, you probably know what it is. You write 50,000 words in a month (not quite a novel length really, and much more than a novella). That equals 1667 words per day. For someone like me, that's a pretty lofty target to hit. Some days in normal life it happens. Lots of others it doesn't. There's work, there's family life, there's a lot going on in a day and fitting those words in regularly is a tall order.

First off, here's the official website, although at the time of writing it was down. Hopefully they'll get it sorted asap.
https://nanowrimo.org/

And for those who have already decided to throw themselves at this mad challenge, this page has some preparation tips before you leap into the mouth of madness: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/writing-novel-one-month-nanowrimo/

Me? I don't do a lot of preparation work for novels. Most of that happens in my head.

My biggest problem with #nanowrimo has always been this rush to bash out prose at the highest rate possibly. It's quantity over quality.
Yes, you can edit it all later. But surely this is only going to require more editing than a piece of work that you took more time over? And I mean a lot more editing. To me, there's a chance that you could go off on such tangents, or make such spectacular errors, that you could render huge chunks of your writing utter worthless.
And again yes, you can prepare beforehand. You can do lots of preparation if you want. But then, aren't you therefore extending the writing process outside of the month of November, and doesn't that therefore defeat the point?

I'm just saying.

A VERY strong negative is my concern over the possible impact on the book I'm currently writing. I am deep in a world of pigs (do not try to end that sentence any other way). I'm writing about a porker called Polka, who's trying very hard to lead a normal, quiet existence and over the course of a few days finds that life turns into everything but normal and quiet. It's at about the 60,000 word mark. That's a lot. And if something should happen to derail the momentum I've got on this twisty, turny novel... That would be a real pile of swill.

So why risk it? If I'm moaning so much about it, why do it to myself?

There's one big reason why I'm tempted to have a go. There are always stories that never get written. I've got notepads full of hundreds upon hundreds of ideas that burned red hot when they first burst into my mind, but have faded to nothing now. Some stories, though, a select few, they stick with you. Some can hang in there for a long time. I've had a couple in the place that lurked for years, waiting for their chance, but I simply had to give them up. They just weren't going to happen. There's not enough hours, and not enough mes to write them all. I've got two stories like that right now. I'm really keen on them, and they're really keen on me. I'd hate to let them go, but there's a pretty big queue of characters who want their tale told, and no-one likes a queue jumper.

One of those stories (and I've got a strong feeling this is the one I'm going for, although that could change at the last minute (just like I might yet say 'sod this ridiculous idea, am I hell trying to write that many words in a day, it's idiotic and I'll probably lose what remains of my mind')) is about a kid who makes his own jigsaws, but they're far from your average jigsaws (there's far more to it than that, but I'm not giving it all away yet - we will all find out more if I go nanowrimo and if this turns out to be the story I go for). It's an idea that popped up over three years ago, and I was red-hot about it, and I was going to start it straight after A Graveyard Visible was finished (might be wrong about that), and it simply never happened.

I don't expect to finish it within 50,000 words. There's too much story in it for that. I don't even expect to get 50k words in a month to be honest, I'm not delusional. But if I could get a good chunk of this novel written in the space of a month, then maybe it might not die off forever. So, in a way, we're saving stories here. There's characters who'd be lost forever if I didn't give this a chance.

Besides, I always think that it's easy to say something is rubbish when you haven't tried it for yourself.

What a beautiful sight. A fresh notepad, 

waiting for a story.

It still really isn't a good idea.

Laters.

(I will do updates. If I have the time in amongst all of this stupidity.)

BY THE WAY, Halloween is coming up! Very very soon. In fact, depending on when you're reading this, Halloween might be today. Or it was yesterday, or last week, and you still feel Halloweeny. If so, follow this link, buy my YA horror, have a freaky time.

myBook.to/MacPliersKindle