An update on the Tube Riders series

Yesterday I finished Chapter Thirty of Tube Riders: Revenge, the final part in the Tube Riders Trilogy. It's currently totalling just under 80,000 words, so based on the lengths of the previous two books its about halfway done.

My original plan was to start writing Revenge in September, write it over the winter and then publish it next summer. My current plan - one that is pretty likely at my current rate of progress - is to finish it IN September.

I've had a couple of angry emails asking when Tube Riders: Exile (Tube Riders Trilogy #2) will be out, because as readers of this blog will know, I finished writing the draft way back in February. I've done a fair bit of editing work on it, but Revenge was crying out to be written and I had to answer the call.

It does make me feel a bit stupid to be talking about the progress on Book 3 when Book 2 is still sitting on my hard-drive, but finishing Revenge before I release Exile actually makes a lot of sense for me.

The Tube Riders was written in 2009 and was originally a standalone book. I had no plans to make it into a series. The Tube Riders had to escape Mega Britain, that was about it. However, the wider world required a longer, more complete story.

As a writer I offer just enough "world" for the reader to expand it themselves. However, when I started writing Exile and now Revenge (a lot of which takes place in London again) I needed to expand the world a bit myself. I needed to show a bit more about life inside Mega Britain, and there were times when I'd write something in Revenge and realise I needed to clarify it in Exile for continuity's sake. In hindsight, writing the whole trilogy before releasing any of them would have been the best option (but probably one that would have driven me mad). As I wrote Exile and then Revenge, I found myself needing to tweak the odd line in the original book in order to keep the continuity the same. The most major amendment was that I made a very minor character (so minor that most readers will have forgotten this person, it was a blink-and-you-miss-it thing) two or three years older, because I wanted them to become a major character in Revenge. It didn't fit before, but now it does. Forgive me.

A lot of writers rush things. They bang out new books once a month and write series after series. I don't know if I'll ever write a series again after this. Before Tube Riders I was all about the standalone, and while no one buys my standalone books I've always preferred writing a story that was contained in a single volume. That's the artist in me talking, not the bookseller. The two engage in fisticuffs regularly.

I want the Tube Riders series to make my name and I want people to be reading it and recommending it in ten, fifteen years time. I want it to be good.

To that end I'll take as long as necessary, but I do think that its quite possible I can have both books out by Christmas. Providing I don't run into any major plot walls in Revenge, I should be able to finish it in September. Then I'll take October to edit Exile again, and November to edit Revenge. In December I'll drink beer and go snowboarding. Something like that.

So bear with me. Both books will be with you soon. But in the meantime, keep the angry mail coming. It's really quite addictive to know people care so much about your books. I can see why George RR Martin releases his six years apart. Unfortunately I don't have his patience.

Back to the writing desk ...

Chris Ward
11th August 2013

Dark Days WIP snippet

I've been working on a horror novel and I thought i'd give you a little snippet. I wrote this passage a couple of days ago and quite liked it. Of course it may never make it to the final novel but there's a good chance it'll survive in some form or other.


One of his teeth felt loose from where the guy had slugged him. Millward had started it, glaring at the man until he got up and came over, then hitting him once, twice, three times in the face before the guy could say a word. The man’s brawny neck had soaked up the punches like a boxer’s training pad, then he had hit Millward with what felt like a sledgehammer. Bar staff had broken it up then and Millward had stumbled outside and fled in case the man wanted a second round.

Why do I keep doing this to myself?

It felt strange to say it, but he had enjoyed being hit. The guy had probably outsized Millward by thirty kilograms and at least three inches in height. He hadn’t wanted to hit the guy, only to incite the guy to hit him, because pain was the only way to make himself remember that he was still alive, that blood still pushed its reluctant way through his veins.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and glanced at the clock. It was 1.47 a.m. He couldn’t remember what time he had got back to the police station with Welch, but it had been no later than nine.

Sometimes the time just disappeared. 

There were three missed calls from Welch on his phone, and a voicemail, but he ignored it, shutting the phone and putting it back in his pocket. She would just be hassling him again, either about work or wanting to fuck. He didn’t want to know about the first and the last would make him feel too guilty, even though it was tempting at times. Welch was a desperate, hollow soul like himself, but he feared that if he got too close to her they would simply dissolve into each other, disappear.

Yeah, I know either disappeared or disappear will have to change but I like both of those sentences at the moment. We'll see.

I'm up to 77 pages now (29,000 words) and hope to finish it around June or July. Of course, it might never get there but so far it's going well.

For anyone who's wondering, I'm also editing Tube Riders: Exile and its going okay. These are my two big projects at the moment. I have a couple of older novels I want to edit up into shape for possible future publication but I don't want to overload myself too much right now.

Tube Riders bargain book promo push

My bestselling dystopian novel The Tube Riders will be featured on two big bargain book promo sites today. If you want to do me a massive favour and help give it a lift up the charges, go grab 200 or so copies for all your friends. Anyone who does that can have a signed photograph of me sitting in my new Merc.

Saying that, on a more annoying note some b•••••d keyed my car while I was in a family restaurant yesterday. It might just have been a kid with a coin and douchebag parents, but it put a dampener on my whole day.

So if you want to make me feel better, go and grab a copy of Tube Riders. It's just 99c, which is 27c less than the bottle of Orangina I bought in the 7Eleven near my house this afternoon. I like Orangina.

;-)

Another good thing about buying Tube Riders this weekend - if you read at the same speed as me (a book of this length takes about three months) then you'll have finished it just in time for part 2, which should be released in the summer.

Happy reading,

Chris Ward
15th April 2013

Head of Words is now available!

As of this morning, Head of Words went live on Amazons all across the world. Very proud to see this book finally out in the world. It's a lot different to my other releases so far so I'm interested to see what the critical reception will be, however I think its a good book and adds a further round to building literary canon, so to speak ...

 The ebook is available now. Hopefully the paperback will follow in the next week or two.

 

 

I'm already hitting up the promotion trail for Head of Words. You can read about me being interviewed here on the blog of my friend Robert Thomas, while I also recently did a guest post on the inspiration behind Head of Words for  the blog Two Girls Reading here. If anyone would like a copy for review purposes either for your blog or Amazon, please contact me via PM on Facebook or post a comment below.

Next up will be the edits/revisions on Tube Riders: Exile. I'm still shooting for a summer release. More details to come as I get to them. I'm also writing a new horror novel in my "spare" time, so keep up to date with my progress by checking out my wordcount bar on the right. I'm setting it at 120k because I think that's a good length for a book, but it could go up or down. We'll see.

Right, back to the grindstone. A writer's work is never done ....

 

Tube Riders is on sale through April for $0.99c

Tube Riders will be on sale for the first half of April (and longer, depending on sales) as part of the build up to the release of the second part of the saga, Tube Riders: Exile, in the summer. The book is finished and is currently in revision.

The three covers - the new one, the old paperback and the old ebook 

As I've blogged about before, Tube Riders is no longer part of Amazon's Select program and therefore will not be offered for free at any time in the near future. Still, $0.99c is within most budgets and that works out at roughly six pages/cent so you're getting a good deal. Plus, its awesome. If I could, I'd lower it even more to like $0.50c, because this is all about getting readers not getting rich, but the lowest Amazon will let me is $0.99 so you'll have to handle it. Remember, if you don't have a Kindle its available for the same price on all over platforms now. The quickest way is to get it from Smashwords, but you can also get it from any major online retailer like Barnes & Noble or Kobo.

If you're new to the series and have seen the split parts London, Bristol and Cornwall on Amazon, while I'm quite happy if you buy them for a combined total of $6.97 (I'll get lunch on you!) remember you can get the whole thing now for less than a dollar. If you've bought these mistakenly thinking that Bristol and Cornwall are parts two and three of the series, then apologies for that. Remember you can refund your purchases from Amazon within a week. For this very same reason if you want to read any of my short stories I really won't resent you if you buy them, read them and then refund them, as long as you promise to tell people how great they are and that buying The Tube Riders, The Man Who Built the World or any of my forthcoming longer works is a great idea. Most of them are 2,000 - 6,000 words so you should be able to get through them in a single sitting. The reason I have Tube Riders on Amazon in three split parts is purely for visibility and marketing, it's not an attempt at a money grab, although at 65k, 68k, and 38k, the three individual parts are longer than many so-called series books anyway, so if you want to tackle them one at a time I really won't mind.

Anyway, that's it for now. By the way, check out my new progress meters on the side of the blog, just below the new releases mailing list (which you really should sigh up for!). These are partly as motivation for me and partly so you can see how I'm getting on. While I sucked at maths at school I'm a bit of a stats man (hence my love of cricket) so I'll probably update them every couple of days or so. I only have one up at the moment but look out for more!

Okay, back to it...

Chris Ward
8th April 2013

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - My Review

If ever there was a book written for analysis in schools and universities then this is it. The Road is a bleak, desolate portrayal of one man's struggle in a post-apocalyptic world to protect his son.

In terms of plot, not a great deal actually happens. The man and the boy (they have no names) make their way slowly towards the coast for no apparent reason. Along the way they trust their luck to find food while avoiding bands of cannibals and other thieves looking to either rob them or eat them. We don't really know what happened, as it is never explained, but they live in a world where ash covers everything and nothing grows. The landscape is almost totally grey, and it is almost always either raining or snowing. The man is getting gradually sicker and sicker from some kind of lung problem, while the boy needs repeated convincing that they are the "good guys" who "carry the fire".

They meet several people along the way, from terrifying cannibals to desperate thieves and people who have given up just waiting for death to take them. The whole time the man forces them onwards, moving on even when they find places they could potentially hole up for a while, because nowhere is safe accept possibly the coast. He is resolute and resourceful but more than anything he burns with love for his son. He will not give up like the rest of humanity seems to have. He will do whatever it takes to keep his son alive.

This is a novel that will divide opinion. It is not beach reading nor action packed nor a thriller. It is bleak, miserable, at times frustrating and confusing. There's no romance. There's no happy ending (depending on how you analyse it). It's simply a powerful novel about love and struggle that also serves as a warning to mankind. So many dystopian-type books are utterly unrealistic, but The Road, in the same way as 1984, shows a future that is actually possible. There are powerful people around the world right now whose fingers hover over a button which could condemn us to the kind of struggle seen in The Road. It's a sobering thought.

A lot of the criticism of this book that I've seen concerns the writing style. I sometimes think that a lot of readers really can't handle anything more complicated that what they can find on the rack in the giftshop next to an airport boarding gate. There are no speech marks and rarely apostrophes for contractions. And the problem is ...? Who really cares whether he writes "didn't" or "didnt"? And it is never, at any point, difficult to tell when someone is speaking nor who is speaking. The effect is hypnotic. It gives the whole novel a dreamy - make that nightmarish - quality. People that can't read a book that has no speech marks should try reading something that is actually difficult to read, like this. Danielewski's House of Leaves makes The Road look like Spot Goes to Town. The kind of reader who doesn't understand everything that this book represents is exactly the type of person who should read it.

Same goes with the grammar. I've read a lot of reviews that complain about it being hard to read. McCarthy does stuff like put adjectives in the wrong place or link five or six clauses with "and". This is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for literature. Every single word in this book is in it's place because he chose to put it there. As someone who writes vastly inferior books to this it is something to be treasured, because every line is something to learn from. And really, it's not very hard to read at all, nor is it frustrating. I found it fascinating.

A lot of people are going to hate this book. I had my own frustrations with it - mainly not knowing what caused the world to turn into a burned wasteland, while the ending will divide opinion - but it is not always about what is said but what is not said, or what is implied. The Road isn't a book that is going to make you happy, it's a book that will likely haunt you. However, a little dark makes the light so much brighter, and we could all do with a little haunting sometimes.

A bleak, chilling masterpiece. And the film is damn good too.

Chris Ward

25th March 2012

New Cover for Five Tales of Horror

After just a few days on sale I decided to update the cover for Five Tales of Horror.

This is the original cover.

 

I think that's a great stock image and I liked the spooky writing, but I realised you can barely see it in thumbnail size. So I gave it a refresh, changed it to the same font I've been using for all my short stories, and added a slight red tint.

This is the new one. A little snappier, I think.

 

Just to prove what I'm getting at, this is them both side by side in small size.

 I think you'll agree that the second is a little nicer to look at. Looks a touch more blood-curdling too!

I gave it a sneaky little free promo this week, and I gave away about 240 copies. That's hardly anything for a free promo - in the first promo for Man Who Built the World I gave away 360, and I sold one copy in the following week - but I sold a couple in the days after. Then, when I changed the cover, sales "took off". I've actually sold 12 copies now. Compare to this time last year, when I gave away 2000 copies of Cold Pools, and sold a massive 9 copies after the promo. I'm actually quite proud of this little collection. It even got a five star review this morning.

I'm not really expecting to make any money (it would need to sell 40 just to pay for the stock image I licenced) on it. I consider these mini collections as free advertising, but if I make any sales its a bonus. Very pleased so far!

Chris Ward
March 21st 2013

Oh, I'm tired, but it's (almost) done

Yesterday I finished my own edits on Head of Words. Roughly six hours of reading it over and over. I love that book but if I ever have to look at it again my eyes will explode.

I hadn't planned to give it another revision, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I can't understand these writers who finish a draft and shoot it straight out to an editor. I know a lot of people do, but what are they thinking? The less an editor has to do, the better. The less an editor has to do, the more of that book is mine. No one sees my books until I personally can't find a single blemish. Then I send it to someone who spots all the blemishes that my caffeine-soaked eyes missed. There are always a few...

What I was mostly doing in this revision was cutting. I hacked about 6000 words, bringing the book's final word count down to 98,400. Dan Barker has a habit of telling little anecdotes, and a couple of those didn't make it. I was also tightening the paragraphs, cutting unnecessary or repeated description, rewriting lines to make them flow better, looking at the rhythm of the paragraphs. It lost a few lines of description that I loved, but I think it's better for it.

Now it goes off to get a pro polish/clean up/proof. Then I'll go through it again to make the corrections and it'll go live. I'm still shooting for a late March/early April release.

And it'll be done. The odd little book I started writing in 2005 will finally be out in the world.

Unlike Tube Riders and Man Who Built the World, it wasn't dumped on from a great height by dozens of agents and publishers. From the moment I typed "THE END" I knew I'd never sell it unless I already had a name as a writer, so I just moved on to the next book and forgot about it. It's just too ... weird.

I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. On the one hand I love it because I went to places with plot and story that I'd never gone to before, and somehow or other I made it out the other side. On the other hand, I always felt it would struggle in the marketplace because it's a confusing book that requires the reader to suspend a lot of belief and also to look back on the book when they're done and see how everything fit together. There's a twist - well, two twists - which aren't really twists at all, because what happens is not really designed to be a big secret. The reader is actually supposed to know what's going on before the main character does, however, I'm expecting lots of reviewers to be like "well, I saw that twist coming", which you're kind of supposed to. You want a twist of mine you wont spot - go read Death Depends. You WON'T pick it. I guarantee it.

In short, while I'm proud of Head of Words as a novel and proud of myself for pushing my own boundaries with it, I think it will disappoint some readers. Fans of Tube Riders or Man Who Built the World (and yes, it seems like there are one or two! :-) ) will find it a hard read because it's nothing like either. The content is also a little nasty in places. There's a lot of recreational drug use, prostitution, violence, and tons of swearing (mind you, I just started reading JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy, and if she can drop a c-bomb in chapter 2 then anyone can ...). It might actually gain me more readers, but we'll see. I like to think I'm developing a small but loyal fanbase who've come to expect the unexpected. There will be more Tube Riders books, I promise you (#2 Exile is done, and #3 Revenge is being planned). However, beyond that, who knows? :-) I'll write whatever storyline punches me in the face the hardest, and I'm taking a lot of hits at the moment...

So, I really need to stop waxing lyrical here and get back to it, because I have a ton more books to write.

Chris Ward
March 19th 2013

Five Tales of Horror

I have decided to start a new series of short story collections entitled Five Tales of ... (original, eh ;-)), in which will be packaged, um, five stories in a similar genre.

Each mini-collection will be priced at $1.49 in the US and 99p in the UK.

In the past I have released short stories individually as well as in collections (well, one so far). My reason for doing this is partly one of value for money, partly one of visibility, and partly to do with branding.

My short stories don't sell many copies so I thought I would try putting them together. Another reason is that not all of my short stories are too short to sell individually, but as part of a collection they fit in okay. There will also be a little overlap - one story in each collection that is available elsewhere.  Why would I do that?  Basically to make my shorts stretch further! I'm pretty sure I don't have enough dedicated followers to get upset about it, but in the unlikely event that you've read everything I've written and you want more, drop me an email... there's a ton of stuff on the hard drive!

Anyway, part one of the collection is titled Five Tales of Horror. These were pretty easy to choose.  I've got an old one in there (Road Stop, written in 2003), plus a couple of personal favorites (Forever My Baby and Room 666 - which very nearly sold to a pro mag a couple of years back) and a couple loosely based on places I worked/visited.

And here's the cover, one I knocked up using Picasa on my iMac.

 

I absolutely love that skull picture, which I picked up on Pond5.com. I'm already thinking about the next one, which will possibly be titled Five Tales of Space Exploration or Five Tales of Alien Worlds, depending what stories fit best. Watch this space.

So, while you're waiting for Head of Words, please enjoy these dark tales in the meantime!

CW 7th March 2013

The Passage - Justin Cronin (book review)

I just finished reading this book, which was recommended to me by a friend.

The Passage was an exceptionally written book which really transcends the whole virus-ends-the-world story and stands head and shoulders above anything else I've read in the genre. It's basically Stephen King's The Stand plus vampires as written by Michael Critchton. It's deep, layered, involving, and had enough plot twists (particularly near the end) to set it apart from the conventional storyline in these kind of books.

Click for Amazon page

A lot of reviewers have complained that there are too many characters. There are, and I almost docked it a star because of it.  Cronin has a habit of explaining many major events from multiple viewpoints, and while this can work, over such a long book it became a little wearing. A lot of characters, particularly those in the Colony, were entirely surplus to requirements. You invest an interest in a character or a group of characters only to have them die off screen. I understood that Cronin was going for a realistic world view and he completely achieved it, but there were instances where I found myself scowling at the screen, right up to the last chapter. However, it was obvious early on that you should never assume anyone is dead until you've seen their body in the ground.

There were a few things that I was dubious about, for example after a hundred years would canned food still be edible? Or, judging by my own clothing after just four or five years, would stuff just lying around in shops not just fall apart the moment you pulled it on? However, the depth of Cronin's research was obvious so I'll just trust him on it, and enjoy the story for what it was.

The virals, I have to say, were awesome. Insect-like vampires with more in common with I Am Legend than Dracula, they were frightening and deadly. And Babcock has to be the coolest uncool name for a vampire ever.

If you like vampire apocalypse type books you will love this. However, it's a massive time and emotional investment. I read the entire Hunger Games trilogy in half the time it took me to read this one book, and while I enjoyed that series, in comparison to The Passage it was like some kiddie playground sandbox stuff.  This is a big, bad, hardcore apocalypse novel for adults. I will definitely be reading the second book in the series but I'm going to take a break now and read some lighter stuff because it left me emotionally drained.

Overall, an excellent book, if extremely long.

Last thing - apparently Ridley Scott has optioned the movie rights, which is great news. I'd be at the cinema in a second if this came out as a movie. However, it's so damn long than I think it would work far better as a TV series.

Easy five out of five.

C.W. March 5th 2013

Head of Words cover art

And the covers are in!

Here is the exclusive reveal of the covers for my next novel, Head of Words, which is tentatively planned for a late March/early April release.

The front/ebook -

and the paperback -

There are again the wonderful work of Su Halfwerk at www.novelprevue.com, who designed the covers for both The Tube Riders and The Man Who Built the World.  What I like most about these covers are the talking points, in particular the words that make up the titles and the bridge in the background, both of which have a lot of significance to the story.

CW
1st March 2012

Head of Words is coming soon!

My next novel, Head of Words, is tentatively scheduled for a late March/early April publication date. I've never been fond of repeating myself so rest assured this novel is completely different from my other two novels, The Tube Riders and The Man Who Built the World. While it has aspects of fantasy and horror it is also heavily influenced by the six months I spent living in a bedsit in an unsavoury part of Bristol post university, so there are a lot of social issues in it too. Hopefully people will enjoy it just as much, though. With this book, as always, I was attempting to push myself as a writer as well as the boundaries of my storytelling.

Here's the blurb for you to feast your eyes on.  The cover will be coming soon.

“We existed in a circle of warmth; one big family, together alone. And now they’re all gone. God, how I miss them …”

Bliss … or is it?

Life is peachy for twenty-something Daniel Barker, who lives with his offbeat group of friends in a small flat in Bristol. From the eccentric Franz to the dominatrix Polly and the psychotic Shane, they all bring colour and excitement to his life. Together they are family, inseparable.

And then Dan’s world is turned on its head the day he returns home to find them gone.

The nightmare is about to begin …

Veering from brutal to comic via tragedy, disaster and love, Head of Words is the story of one man’s path to understanding upon a rollercoaster of life that threatens to both destroy him and set him free.

The Tube Riders: Exile teaser snippet

I'm in a good mood today so I thought I'd post this tiny little snippet from near the beginning of Tube Riders: Exile.

Can you guess which character this is?

The rushing wave forced his mouth and his eyes open. His vision blurred and he felt bitter, salty water pummeling its way into his lungs. He felt himself tumbling over and over, dragged under, pulled back down, caught in a death roll. Sharp rocks lacerated his clothing and slashed fingers of blood across his skin.

Then, for a brief moment there was air, and he howled like a dying man as water burst out of him, seconds before the next monstrous wave crashed down upon his head, dragging him back under.

He thought of his family, of his mother’s arms. He remember how she had kissed him in the days before, told him how much he was loved.

The water battered him again, and he saw himself being torn away from his family, dragged down into a black mine of hell that would turn him into a monster with a dark, cancerous hatred in his heart.

CW Feb 19th 2013

Rewriting a Sentence - a few tips

Here’s a little writing clinic today, on the art of rewriting a sentence.

Writing is, of course, not just about what you say, but how you say it. Here I’ll give you a few examples of how you can rewrite a sentence (sometimes into more than one sentence ...). This is not, of course, to say how one is better than the other, because there will be a time and a place for most sentences.

As a base let’s try this one –

Vincent ran quickly down the street away from the men who were running after him.

It’s not a bad sentence, but it’s a little boring and doesn’t say much despite using quite a lot of words. We can tighten it with some sharper vocabulary. In general, where an adverb is used – “quickly” in this case – a stronger verb exists that implies the same meaning. Sprinted, bolted, dashed, hurried, rushed, fled . . . all of these are better alternatives to “ran quickly”, which by its vey nature does not express the meaning of the words it uses.

Also, look out for phrasal verbs that can be tightened or replaced by a single word verb. Of course, English originates from many sources, and with Romance languages being more lyrical it makes sense to use a verb that came from one instead of a clunkier phrasal verb. In this case “run after” can be replaced by a word such as “pursued”, “followed” or “chased”.

Consider –

Vincent sprinted down the street away from the men who were chasing him.

Or

Vincent fled down the street with his pursuers following him.

Better. We can also omit details we already know. For example, if we don’t care about the street, or if we already know where Vincent is, we can cull the street entirely.

Vincent fled from his pursuers.

Simple, but not very dramatic.

It’s often interesting to add detail rather than take it away. What you’re doing is adding colour to a scene. Just make sure that colour isn’t in the form of –ly adverbs.

Vincent bolted, his feet clattering over the cracked asphalt. Behind him, the men gave chase, their shouts of anger shattering the still of the night.

Interesting, if a bit long winded, and the clatter/shatter thing is borderline weird because of the rhyme. It sounds nice to write but can annoy readers. However, you can sort that out with a Thesaurus.

When trying to spice up a sentence beware of clichés –

Vincent fled with his pursuers in hot pursuit.

“Hot pursuit” is a cliché (in fact, “spice up” might be one too! I’ll have to check…). These are expressions that are so common as to be eye-rollingly annoying. In short, they’re a sign of lazy writing, of relying on tried and tested phrases, so you should try to cut them out. Search Google for lists of them. (here's one) You’d be surprised how many there are. One that got into Tube Riders was “all hell broke loose”. I liked it, but it had to die …

Another thing that a lot of newbie writers forget about is their senses. Remember, real life isn’t just what you see, but what you hear, taste, smell and touch. Use them. Again, they add colour.

Vincent tasted blood on his tongue as his boots echoed off the crumbling asphalt. Behind him, the shouts of his pursuers rang in the air as they hunted him. He grimaced, remembering the coarseness of their rough hands as they held him underwater, the stench of week-old sweat, the salty taste of the cold liquid as it forced its way down his cracked and bleeding throat.

Okay, so I’ve gone totally over the top there and one one sentence has become three, but you get my drift. You don’t have to force senses into every sentence, but just remember they exist. When describing something always keep them in mind, just like you would in real life. What you want is for your fiction to jump off the page, and remembering your senses will certainly help.

So far we’ve focused on Vincent, but of course there are loads of ways we could rearrange this sentence.

You could focus on the people chasing him –

They were gaining on him, Vincent knew, as he sprinted down the street.

Or on outside details –

The howling wind ripping through the trees screamed at Vincent to hurry. The men were gaining.

You could even consider what Vincent is thinking –

The wind howled down the dark street. At the far end, a group of shadows appeared beneath a solitary streetlight. Here they come. They’re gaining. I’m dead this time. Taking what he hoped wouldn’t be his last breath, Vincent turned and ran.

(use italics if possible to indicate thought. Some people use speech marks which is kind of silly since speech marks are used for speech, while some people don’t do anything, which means the thoughts can sometimes blend into the rest of the narrative.)

And one last thing, as I’m going on far long than I originally intended with this, remember the lengths of your sentences. Depending on your genre, short sentences could be better.

Vincent looked up. The wind howled. There, beneath the streetlights: a man. Heart pounding, Vincent turned. And ran.

Or long ones –

The howling wind tried to mask the sound of pounding feet over the cracked and broken asphalt, disguise the shouts of the men as they raced like a black tide towards where Vincent, his heart pounding, his throat and lungs raw from the torture, turned on shaking legs and began, one fragile step after another, an attempt to escape.

Or something like that …

Okay, I’ve gone on far longer than I intended to with this one, but I hope some of you find this useful. Remember, there are always more than one way to describe something. If your writing feels flat (or worse, other people tell you it’s flat) think about some of these ideas and see if you can’t, um, spice things up a little bit.

Good luck and happy writing.

CW

30^th Jan 2012

In Praise of Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If you're here you'll know I'm a writer, and there comes a time for every writer when they feel the need to bow down in awe of someone who's skill is infinitely better than theirs.  Today I'd like to do that to Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Spanish author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game.

I read The Shadow of the Wind a few years ago and it was an astonishingly good book.  A mystery story set in early 20th Century Barcelona, it had everything: exquisite writing, wonderful characters and fantastic plot twists.

 

The wife recently bought me The Angel's Game for Christmas and while I've only read a few pages so far it looks to be along the same lines.  When I write I do my best to write well, but sometimes I find myself reading a book that I just can't touch.  One day, I hope, but certainly not now.

Here's a little paragraph for you from page 30 of The Angel's Game -

"More than once I too hoped that would happen, but my father always came back and found me alive and kicking, and a bit taller.  Mother Nature didn't hold back: she punished me with her extensive range of germs and miseries, but never found a way of successfully finishing the job.  Against all prognoses, I survived those first years on a tightrope of a childhood before penicillin. In those days death was not yet anonymous and one could see and smell it everywhere, devouring souls that had not even had time enough to sin."

Read it aloud.  It's like poetry, perfectly flowing and rhythmical.  And that last sentence ... it's literature as art.  I've heard a lot of popular fiction writers criticising literary fiction because of its verbosity, when to me that shows an underlying envy of someone who has mastered their craft.  When one puts pen to paper it is with the attempt to write something that comes alive off the page, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon does that with ease.

His stories are just brilliant too.  If you haven't read The Shadow of the Wind and you like deep, involving mysteries with insane plot twists all wrapped up in beautiful prose, I suggest you give it a try.

CW
26th January 2012

A Year in Self Publishing

A Year of Self Publishing

Those of you who know me well will know that I’ve been writing since forever, but it was only one year ago, January 24^th, 2012, that I self-published for the first time.

I’ve been traditionally published before to a certain extent – two short stories in professional magazines and more than 20 times in the small presses. In total, I’ve sold 33 short stories, however a lot of those sales were to magazines that bit the bucket before my story (and my pay check) ever saw print.

  

I won’t go too much into my reasons for deciding to self-publish, but it was mostly an attempt to save myself as a writer. I’d written what I thought was a seriously top drawer book (Tube Riders) and seen it rejected time and again by publishers and agents (it actually got three partial requests, but that was about it). My confidence in being able to sell was at such a low ebb I was close to quitting. I hadn’t written anything meaningful in more than two years and I’d been wasting my time doing all sorts of random things which weren’t writing fiction, generally throwing away whatever shred of talent I had.

Self-publishing was something I felt I had to try. I wanted people to read my books, had confidence in my writing skills and my stories, and saw it as an opportunity rather than a last chance saloon.

This is what happened.

On 24^th January 2012 I uploaded a previously published short story, Forever My Baby, to Amazon, followed a few days later by another short story, The Ageless.

By the end of January I had made four sales – two to myself, one to my dad and one to a mate.

In February I added three more previously published short stories and a collection of ten, Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories. By the end of the month I had sold 22 total copies, mostly to friends and family, and made about $20.

So it continued. In March I published my novel The Tube Riders, followed by another novel, The Man Who Built the World, in September. I added several more short stories, the first two episodes of a novella series, and I split Tube Riders into three parts, primarily as a marketing tool.

By the end of the year I had 21 items for sale on Amazon.

My sales ticked over very slowly without really kicking off. Still, by the end of the year I had sold 415 books and had make a fraction under $700.

Ebook sales totals by month

(all Amazon stores combined)

Jan – 4

Feb – 22

Mar – 15

Apr – 13

May – 6

Jun – 32

Jul – 30

Aug – 27

Sept – 20

Oct – 72

Nov – 33

Dec – 113

Paperbacks (Sept to Dec) - 18

Total – 415

Revenue - $699.66

October’s spike was the first time I offered Tube Riders as a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select free promotion, and in December I did another one. While I’m not a fan of giving books away for free, I am very serious about making this into a career and in the early days it is important to get as many readers as possible. Hopefully in the future I will be able to move away from KDP Select into other distributors and more traditional forms of advertising beyond the free promotions that Select allows. However, so far it has helped me a lot, although for those sales I have given away roughly 16,000 free books through promotions. It is quite some figure, but considering there are probably more than 10 million people with Kindles alone it’s a drop in the ocean, and it allowed me to reach readers that would otherwise have not found my work. It’s a form of advertising, and costs me nothing, whereas billboards or newspaper ads would cost a small fortune I don’t have. So far it’s been worth it.

So, $700. It's a solid figure, but not so much when you consider the outlay. So far, my rough costs have been –

$650 – production costs (cover design, formatting etc)

$200 – advertising (paperback giveaways, competitions, ads sites, websites etc)

And how about time?

It’s impossible to tell for sure, but at a rough estimate over the last year I’ve spent an average of 2 hours a day on writing, advertising, designing covers, formatting . . . so even if I hadn’t had the expenditures I would still have earned less than $1 per hour for my efforts.

What does this tell me?

That self-publishing is no easy cash grab. I have a day job and some days I’m out of the house working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fitting in so much work on self-publishing around that was pretty hard. In layman’s terms, I busted my ass on this.

Am I satisfied?

I don’t consider myself a flash in the pan or a fly-by hoping to make a quick buck. I am a careerist and sooner or later this will be my full time job. It’s not open for debate. The number of great reviews I’ve had back up my own confidence in my material. I’m currently working on a seven year plan to go full time (by the time I’m 40) so I have six to go. As I write this I’ve already had 113 sales in January which is 528 in my first year. If someone had offered me that at the beginning of 2012 I would have jumped all over it.

While some people blow up with just one or two books and start selling by the thousand, I never realistically expected that to happen to me. I’ve always been a grafter, but that’s fine. Health permitting I’ll be putting out the same amount of product (and hopefully more) each year. Unless there’s some random market crash I only expect things to improve.

I’ll save what I’ve learned from self-publishing over the last year for another post, but self-publishing has already achieved what I needed it to achieve.

It has saved me as a writer.

For years I wrote roughly a novel a year, but by the age of 30 (2009, when I wrote Tube Riders) the years of rejection and failure to find a publisher had taken its toll and my creativity was at an all time low.

Back in June last year, three months after I published Tube Riders, I realised that it was time to start writing again. In the past seven months I’ve written a shade over 275,000 words, or three good-length novels. That is my most productive period ever, and with 24,000 words in January so far it is showing no signs of abating. I’m back, and writing better than ever.

And I’m committed to continuing to improve. Not just my books, but my knowledge of the business side of self publishing.

There’s a lot more to come from me. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

CW

24^th Jan 2012

The Hunger Games vs The Tube Riders

Over the last weekend I bought and read the first volume in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy.  I’d heard a lot about it but bought it kind of on a whim while I was picking up a few other books.  I read it over three days (usually takes me a month to read a book that long) and thought it was really good.

By a slightly scary coincidence (no, it had nothing to do with me) a new review last Monday for my book The Tube Riders had this to say -

“If you loved The Hunger Games then you will love this one. I couldn't wait to read what happened next and will definently (sic) buy the sequel.”

After reading THG, I have to say that there are definite similarities.  Therefore, I thought it would be fun to write an utterly pretentious blog comparing the merits of a multi-million selling series (with a movie to boot) against my book, which at last count had sold about 150 copies.

I’ll try to be as objective as possible, because this isn’t supposed to be about which book is better, just how they compare.

(be warned, there are some spoilers coming up)

The World

Hunger Games is set in a future North America called Panem.  The capital city is called Capitol, and the rest of the “world” is split up into 12 districts, each of which serves a different function.  There is some mention early on of wars and natural disasters that have changed the landscape.

Tube Riders is set in the renamed Mega Britain in 2075.  Mega Britain is very recognizable as Britain except for surface detail, such as the perimeter walls surrounding the cities and the buried towns and removed roads in the countryside, known as the Greater Forest Areas, all of which is designed to prevent movement of population.

Result - Draw

The Leader

The Hunger Games doesn’t really involve President Snow too much.  We don’t know much about him except that he is angry at Katniss at the end.

In The Tube Riders, the leader, Maxim Cale, known as the Governor, is a seven-foot tall albino black guy with red eyes and telekinetic powers.  He has been in charge of the country for 40 years give or take, and doesn’t seem to age.  He features fairly strongly as a major character.

Winner - the Governor

Katniss Everdeen vs Marta Banks

In the battle of the leading ladies, Katniss is clearly the more badass in terms of skill, although Marta can do a mean tube ride.  Katniss has excellent hunting, archery and foraging skills.  Marta, having grown up in the urban waste land of London Greater Urban Area, is only really good at tube riding, although she can use a knife a little and “does what’s necessary” to get by in London.

Winner (in a fight) - Katniss

Winner (catching food) - Katniss

Winner (catching a train) - Marta

Peeta vs Switch

The battle of the leading men swings back the other way.  I really liked Peeta.  I thought he was kind hearted, gentle (except in a few certain situations), and honest.  He also seems to be pretty good looking.  Switch is a scrawny little man with a bad eye, no redeeming features and will kill without mercy or morals.

Winner (beauty contest) - Peeta 

Winner (fight) - Switch

Cato vs Dreggo

Cato was the only real villain in THG, and he had very little screen time, mainly because the book is written from Katniss’s point of view.  Dreggo, on the other hand, gets almost as much screen time in TTR as Marta, has been described as “a walking horror show” and is a hate-filled agent of vengeance.

Winner - Dreggo

The Brutality

I was very surprised with how much blood and gore was in THG.  Not that it bothers me, I just wondered how such violence can be considered YA yet there wasn’t a swear word in sight.  People get blown to pieces by landmines but no one so much as utters s**t.  TTR contains the same levels of violence but there’s a lot more bad language to go with it.  Mind you, TTR isn’t aimed at the YA market, whatever that really means.

Draw

The pacing

The Hunger Games really raced along.  I actually thought the whole reaping part was over way too soon (one chapter) while the middle section before the games started was too slow.  The Games themselves, though, absolutely rattled along.

Here is where it’s difficult to comment objectively (because I wrote it) but reviewers have tended to agree to the same with The Tube Riders.  However, with so many POV characters it is inevitable that there are some slower chapters.  Overall, though, for a 600-page book people seem to agree that it’s pretty fast paced.

Draw, THG maybe shades it

Sales figures

Millions vs not a lot.

Winner - The Hunger Games by an absolute mile!

I hope you enjoyed this little comparison of what I think are two awesome books.  Most people are familiar with one but I think the other is worth checking out.  Yeah, so you might think I’m being a pretentious writer in comparing my little book with a literary sensation, but you don’t need to take my word for it.  All you have to do is go over to Amazon and read the Look Inside (five chapters) and then come back and agree/disagree.  Nothing lost, nothing gained.

I haven’t read parts 2 & 3 of The Hunger Games Trilogy but I will be doing so shortly.  As for parts 2 & 3 of The Tube Riders, they’re currently under construction.  Watch this space.

CW

8th Jan 2012