Cover Reveal

I’m on the home straight of my long race to publish my debut novel, A Wizard’s Good Misfortune. I can now gladly reveal the delightful cover below.

I was lucky to get a talented artist, Alice Bessoni, to commission this gorgeous piece of art. She couldn’t have done a better job, in my eyes. I gave her a description of a pivotal scene in that novel that I wanted as the cover and she came back with several black & white concept sketches. We emailed back and forth over which sketch I wanted to use and what changes I would like added. Once happy with the design, she went off and took her time to create this lovely image which will sit proudly on the front cover of A Wizard’s Good Misfortune. The novel is set for release on 23rd July 2021.

You can find more of her wonderful art on her website: https://alicebessoni.com/

Flash Fiction – February

I met up with the Spuds again and received some valuable feedback on my January Jealousy piece. Sarah pointed out that some of my action description – the spade flinging soil, the sandals tiptoeing – had the wrong focus at times. MT & Stef both agreed that my piece wasn’t true flash fiction. Which I agreed with, it was just a short story to me. I didn’t bother following the flash fiction rules, I just let what my subconscious wanted me to write. They all agreed though it contained my typical creepy gruesomeness.

So for February’s subject, FEDORA, I promised myself to try and write something more along the guidelines and see what the Spuds think of it this time.

MT has posted her piece now, link here, and Sarah has posted her’s here.

Fedora

He noticed a tan-coloured fedora rolling down the high street. He thought about running after it but felt it was going too fast to chase after without looking like an idiot in doing so. From the other side of the street, he watched as another man wearing a shemagh around his neck ran out into the road and pursued the freewheeling hat. This man, Mr Shemagh, eventually caught the hat and stepped out of the road and onto the pavement. He watched Mr Shemagh look around for the owner. An instant later, the man was barged out of the way by someone rushing passed him.

He caught a flash of long, silky hair and a hint of perfume that smelt like an archangel who worked in a sweetshop. The young woman threw him a brief apology before dashing on further down the pavement. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, this Miss Heaven-Scent, as she caught up to Mr Shemagh. She fired off a barrage of ‘thank yous’ and that smile of hers made you want to go and adopt a puppy. Mr Shemagh handed over her hat as if he was delivering her a glass slipper.

The man scoffed at the scene of these two flirty-birds and continued on his way. He briefly turned back to see the two of them still laughing and smiling together. Next time though, he thought, next time he’ll try and make an effort.

Flash Fiction – January

Shocking end! :O

BPFFC #01: Taking back what’s mine

And here’s me thinking he wanted to own a strip bar called Pete’s Pet Parlour. /o\

Monthly Flash Fiction – January

I don’t know if I’ve told you but I’m a proud member of The Baked Potatoes. We’re a critique group of five writers who meet up about twice a month, here in Vienna, and we’ll soon celebrate our third anniversary. You haven’t heard of us? Give it time, you will. My writing has improved greatly over these years thanks to the great feedback I’ve received from Sarah, Kathi, MT & Stef.

The latter half of 2017 was… a bit slack for most of us. We didn’t get much writing done, but 2018 has kicked off with a big bang. In January, me, Sarah & Stef, took part in a fantastic two-day Young Adult workshop with the prolific author, Keith Gray. The three of us all agreed that we learned so much from Keith. He also inspired us to knuckle down and get back to writing EVERY DAY! And that’s what I’ve been doing.

One of the four things I have on the go right is an idea from MT. She wanted us all to write a (maximum of 300-words) short story every month, with the topic selected from one of four words that begin with the first letter of the month. So, for January, we chose the topic, Jealousy. First thing I did was look up the exact meaning of the word in the dictionary.

jealous resentment against a rival, a person enjoying success or advantage, etc., or against another’s success or advantage itself.
mental uneasiness from suspicion or fear of rivalry, unfaithfulness, etc., as in love or aims.
vigilance in maintaining or guarding something.
a jealous feeling, disposition, state, or mood.

I decided to go for option 3, and here are my 300 words. Nothing too serious, it’s just what I like to think of physical workout for my writing brain. I hope to have links to the other Spud’s entries, as soon as they post them.

p.s. MT has her entry up now, found here, along with lots more of her great poetry.

p.p.s. Now Sarah has her entry up too, found here.

JEALOUSY

54 B.C.E – Britannia

A spade hurls clumps of earth into the air. A Roman soldier digs into the soggy ground atop a hillock. He puts his foot on top of the spade and pushes hard. The spade briefly hits stone before giving way and falling through a hole. He bends down to peer through the hole and sees things sparkling in the darkness. He claws away at the mud to reveal more stonework. Stamping down hard, he loosens more of the bricks to make a big enough hole to fit through.

He slides down a rope and drops into the chamber with a crunch. He looks down around his feet to see that the entire floor is covered with bones, rib cages and skulls. He retches, then gathers his crimson cloak to his nose. He spots the body of someone sitting on a throne at the far end of the chamber. His sandals tiptoe their way over the bones towards the bottom step of the throne. He looks up at the skeletal remains of a long-dead king staring blankly ahead.

Around the base of the throne, there are bowls of earthenware overflowing with gems, jewellery, and dead flowers. The soldier releases his cloak from his nose and instead uses it as a bag. He scoops up a fistful of gems and drops them into his cloak. He turns to leave but notices a golden tiara under the left hand of the skeleton. He snatches it up and admires it, failing to notice movement on the throne. He looks up to see the skeleton standing and holding a sword above its head.

“That’sssss mine!” it hisses, and the sword cleaves the soldier’s head from his shoulders. The skeleton picks up the fallen tiara and sits back down.

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part three

Parts one and two can be found here and here.

After the Saturday ended at 4pm, I went home knackered but invigorated. I was fast asleep by 9:30pm.

I was raring to go the next morning, even though it meant another 06:30 wake-up. Julian was his energetic self and once again gave us some great things to think on:

On the nose dialogue – I think we’re all guilty of this with first drafts.
Adverbs – An endangered species these days, but he says not all of them should be wiped off the face of your story (e.g., “You’re a fucking idiot,” she said fondly.)
Dramatic Irony – He often mentioned that you want your reader to ‘lean in’ when they read your story. This is one way to help that.
Comedy/Tragedy – Basically, just a matter of Point of View. If the reader is inside the head of the character, and they slip on a banana skin, then it’s terrible. But if it’s from an outside observer’s POV, then it’s hilarious.
Voice/Prose – I’m editing a multi-protagonist story right now. I’ll have to go through and make sure they all have their own, unique voice and not sound like clones.

Towards the end of the day, Julian went on to talk about Dan Harmon‘s fascinating, eight-step, modern take of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces theory. Julian followed this up by saying how he also likes to look at Amazon reviews by some random person. He then looks through their Amazon review history and he often spots a timeline/life thread that could make an interesting story.

It was at this moment he wanted us all to do another twenty-minute writing exercise. We had to create a number of Amazon reviews from an imaginary person that kind of mirrored, as much as we could, the eight points of the Hero’s Journey. Some of the writers in our group struggled with the concept of this exercise, but good old Mr Subconscious was on it in a flash. So below is the five Amazon reviews from one imaginary person that I read out to the group.

All the characters in these fake Amazon reviews are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please don’t sue me!

Item 1 – Condenser Microphone
Rating = 5 stars out of 5.
Review:
I recently bought this microphone with the winnings from coming first in my local pub’s Karaoke contest. It’s AWESOME! Makes you sound even better.

Item 2 – How to become a better singer DVD by Britley Spearing
Rating = 4 stars out of 5.
Review:
A very good instructional video, but I noticed some of her singing was off-key, so I’m only giving her a four out of five.

Item 3 – One-piece sequined jumpsuit
Rating = 3 stars out of 5.
Review:
This looked amazing in the picture, and even though I ordered the right size, it’s WAY too tight around my stomach.

Item 4 – My Life, an autobiography by Simon Cowbell
Rating = 0 stars out of 5.
Review:
Stupid, useless, high-waisted arsehole! Writes a boring book about his fake tan. I didn’t even buy it either, I nicked it from Tesco.

Item 2 – Dummies guide to Flipping Burgers
Rating = 5 stars out of 5.
Review:
I don’t care what the haters think. This book will kick-start my career to greatness.

That brought out quite a few laughs around the room.

With the end of the course soon approaching, Julian talked at length about the publishing business and his experiences with it. I gained more valuable knowledge about traditional publishers. Mainly the aspect that your work needs to go through a filter, in order to stand out. Whether that filter is winning or getting short-listed in a contest or being published in a magazine.

I’ve always been dead set on self-publishing my full-length novel; I was ninety-nine percent certain I’d do it myself. I’ve researched all the topics on doing this, and I’ve already commissioned a talented artist to create my cover. But after listening to Julian, I might just try approaching agents with my manuscript first. If no-one bites, no problem; I’ll do it myself.

Once the course ended, I thanked Julian for all the valuable information he passed on to us and for inspiring me so much. He’s helped me put a name and a face to my subconscious, and he’s energized me to write more. I’ll definitely try and enter a short story contest in the near future.

Now back to the painful editing of my novel.

p.s. Have a look at Julian’s work; I really enjoyed CRASH!

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part two

Part one can be found here.

So… after the fifteen minutes of writing were up, Julian went around each one of us to ask what we had written. Like I said previously, most writers had described (in great detail) the entire life of one of their characters. When he looked to me, I had to let my slightly embarrassed Mr Conscious do the talking. My subconscious was now sat back in his cave, feet up on a desk, with a smug look on his face.

23:59:57 –
23:59:58 –
23:59:59 –
00:00:00 – Program started.
00:00:01 – Send mail: “Dear [insert customer name], we at the Unprosecutable Bank, wish you a Happy New Year! For your first New Year’s resolution, why not take out another loan at a special low-interest rate of only 24.5%?”
00:00:02 – Mail server confirmed message sent.
00:00:03 – Program ends.
00:00:04 – Run generic_new_year_message in three-hundred and sixty-four days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-six seconds.

It got a few laughs – alongside a few puzzled looks – but Julian also laughed and said that there’s always one person who has to… to mess about with the rules (or words to that effect). I guess my subconscious got away with it this time?

Julian then talked some more on numerous topics. One topic that stood out was his metaphor for your unconsciousness being home to a giant compost heap. Everything in your life that you’ve seen/done/said or experienced, gets thrown onto this compost heap. You can then use this compost to grow a seed for a new story, or character, or anything you wish. Some great ideas can come from this compost heap that will keep building up, year on year.

He also mentioned how useful Eustress can be to you as a writer. A beneficial form of light stress that can help light a fire under your backside and get you writing. One example, deadlines! Check out the link to read more on it.

As the Saturday session was coming to a close, Julian mentioned another topic that has greatly improved my writing: The Genius of Scene. In that some of the best writers (he mentioned Mary Shelley) were often in a group with other talented writers. The whole group read and critiqued each other’s work and so further elevated their writing.

I can appreciate how well this works. Over the last year, I’ve attended every monthly meeting that the fantastic writenow.at group has held. One of the best things to happen whilst going to these meetings was to join up with three other writers and create our own little critique group. We now call ourselves the Baked Potatoes™. We meet up once a fortnight and take turns to critique each other’s work.

My writing has improved so much since this group has started. Huge plot holes have been found by my fellow writers that I, as a writer, were too close to the story to spot. One character that I thought was unimportant was in fact loved by one writer, and she wanted to read more about this character.

If you are a writer and you haven’t yet found a group to meet up with, I’d suggest you go and start one right now! Try meetup.com, this is a good place to start. At the minimum, it’ll thicken your skin when it comes to receiving criticism. I’ve perfected how to keep smiling when someone rips your writing to shreds.

In part three I’ll finish up with some more great insights from Julian, and of course more shenanigans from my subconscious.

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part one

I recently took part in a very enjoyable short story workshop led by the utterly inspiring, and incredibly talented, Julian Gough. It was run over a weekend, starting at 9am!? (Who the hell thought a 9am start on a Saturday and Sunday was a great idea?) It wasn’t Julian’s fault, nor the organisers, it was the only time available for this intriguing venue (WUK Vienna). Looking back over those two days it was well worth it, although I need another weekend off to recover from this weekend.

After introducing himself, Julian started with some fascinating insights into the mind of the writer. He talked about Freud and the effect of Mesmer two centuries ago. But what he was about to say next caused a Eureka moment in my fledgeling writer’s mind.

He began to explain the differences between the conscious part of your mind and the subconscious part. He said the conscious part does most of the day-to-day stuff, but when you write, you need the subconscious part to take over. He mentioned that you have to unlock a number of ‘fire-doors’ that separate the two parts of the mind, so that the subconscious can take over for a while and do the writing for you. Also, he said that early psychologists thought of this relationship between the two parts as though a master and slave arrangement.

This struck a chord with me. I started to visualize these two imaginary figures in my mind as he continued talking. Then he came out with those dreaded words – writing exercises. Urghhh, I’m not a fan of writing groups that get together and go, “…let’s write something? See what you can come up in fifteen minutes?”

But Julian had a great way to help us write: constraints. Trying to write something, with no constraints set, is tough – try it yourself. Instead, Julian gave us a constraint to work with: write for only ten or fifteen minutes about the entire life of something or someone.

Now… almost other the other writers in the group wrote a good page or two on a character from one of their stories. MY subconscious thought ‘bugger that’ and had this conversation with my conscious self as I stared at the wall.

Mr Conscious kicks in the last fire-door that leads to the room containing the mischievous trickster, Subconscious, and shouts into the darkness below. “Oi, you! Write something, you’ve got fifteen minutes.”

The sudden blinding light pouring through the door makes Subconscious squint. “Sod off! I hate writing exercises.”

Mr Conscious grabs a book from one of the many shelves that line the wall and throws it at Subconscious. “Don’t you start acting like a prima donna now! I don’t want to be embarrassed when I go back up there and tell them we haven’t come up with something.”

Subconscious rubs his head where the book hit him. “Look, I’m an artist. I can’t just crap out something from thin air, I need to be INSPIRED.”

“Well, how about this, we need to write a quick ditty about the life of something,” said Mr Conscious, fixing his tie and straightening the pens in the chest pocket of his shirt.

DING! LIGHT-BULB! A big grin breaks out on Subconscious’ face.

Being telepathic, Mr Conscious yells, “HELL NO! We’re not writing about THAT! Write something routine for pity’s sake.”

Subconscious leaps to his feet and performs cart-wheels around the room. “Tough shit, I do the writing, you do the steering. The only writing you’re capable of is the filling out of application forms.”

Mr.Conscious squats down and holds his head in his hands. “Please! For once in our lives could you just write something normal like everyone else? You’re so embarrassing.”

“Nope! Out of my way dummkopf, I have art to create,” replied Subconscious, as he bounds up the stairs and out of the door that leads up to the ‘control room’.

In part two I’ll treat you to what my little trickster of a subconscious came up with.

Sources of Inspiration.

For myself, music is a powerful source of inspiration for my imagination. Often when I find a new piece of music that I love, I will play it over and over again. Whilst I’m listening to it, a new scene will pop into my head. The more times I replay that same track, the more I flesh out this scene. Finally, I end up listening to this track so much that I get sick of it, and end up dropping it from my playlist.

What I’m left with, in my mind, is a fantastically rendered set-piece. I can then expand on it and add it to whatever I’m currently writing about, or I can use it as the seed for a new story.

I also keep a little moleskin notebook in my jacket pocket. I’ve scribbled down some interesting characters I’ve observed on my train journeys to and from work.

Then there are times when you stumble upon something completely out of the blue. Take this house I nearly walked passed without noticing; I simply had to stop and take a photo of it:

How could you not come up with the premise for a scary story from one glance at this house? I know I have! I’ve once again had to bump my full-length novel down the priority list as my muse suddenly appears on my shoulder and begins stomping up and down, shouting ideas in my ear for a new scary story.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Why, and when, did you start writing?

The summer of 1997 was when I started writing. I’ve always loved going to the movies and I’d regularly visit my local cinema at the weekends. On this particular Saturday in 1997, I bought my ticket, grabbed my usual coke and popcorn, then sat down to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. The curtain parted, the lights went out, and the opening scene of this movie kicked off with an explosive set-piece.

Several minutes later, I’m sat there dumb-founded. What the hell is this crap? It’s the only movie I’ve ever wanted to walk out on. I didn’t though since I reasoned I paid enough for the ticket and refreshments. After the film finished, I trudged home shaking my head in disbelief at what I just had to sit through.

When I got back home I immediately fired up my computer, opened up Wordpad, and started writing. I knew diddly-squat about writing back then: three-act structure, protagonist/antagonist, character arc, all these terms were unknown to me at that time. Once I finished those first two pages, I read them and thought, “What the hell am I writing about?”

Eighteen years later, after devouring dozens of books on screenwriting and how to write a novel, I’m not far off from self-publishing that original screenplay as a novel. I can’t really self-publish a screenplay, but I can if I convert it, or even better, expand it into a novel.

It’s been tough, as most of you can attest to, having to flesh out those one hundred and twenty pages of a screenplay into a full-length novel. But on the plus side, it gave me the opportunity to add scenes into the novel that I had earlier removed from the screenplay in order for it to get under the one hundred and twenty-page limit.

Looking back down the mountain I’m about to reach the summit of, I can smile. I don’t care if this debut novel fails to sell outside my circle of family and friends; I DID IT! I also know that I’ve got many more stories bubbling inside my head that are bursting to get down onto the page.

How about you?