Tag Archives: an author with children

1 Aug 2012 · 9:42 pm

50 shades of… Mmm…

Well… shite to be honest.

McOther bought me 50 Shades of Grey in a car boot. I read it. I wanted to know what happened next – power to you E L.

I bought books 2 and 3 for Kindle and started reading. Then the repetition began to get to me. Like hearing the same note over and over again the regular occurance of certain shorthand phrases started to grate… I got 39% into book two, read the word artfully twice in the same sentence followed by a sentence containing the word ‘voice’ twice in about five words (when the second ‘voice’ could just have easily have been ‘sound’) and I thought, ‘what am I doing? These are precious minutes of my life that I won’t get back.’ So I returned the e-books and got a refund.

Yes it has something, I wanted to know what happened to the characters but when push came to shove I just couldn’t wade through the writing style to find out. I suppose what it needed was a good hard edit. And until it has one, I lack the will.

So, some examples of repetition.

  1. Dialogue tags; nobody talks, they ‘murmur’ often when I think she may mean that they mutter. The best books I’ve read only really use ‘said’ and the real masters of conversation Pratchett, for example, hardly have any dialogue tags at all. I was taught that if you repeat anything other than ‘said’ too often it starts to stand out. The dialogue in 50 shades proves that.
  2. Nobody looks stern, they set their mouth in a thin hard line, sometiems several times on the same page.
  3. Ana bites her lip so often mine is bleeding in sympathy.
  4. I know he’s rich and he’s meant to be a git but he drives Audis for heavens sake, five of them. He must be a monumental tosser!
  5. Ana’s inner goddess does a lot of panting.
  6. If she mentions his fingers she mentions that they are long, pretty much always.
  7. We are told he is hot, a lot. I’d like to be shown.
  8. He shouts things like, ‘yeh baby, come for me!’ Mwah ha hah hargh. I’d definitely get a spanking for excess levity if I was Ana because I wouldn’t be able to stop giggling. I mean, is he Austin Powers?
  9. She always spirals or disintegrates into an orgasm.
  10. His/her breath hitches several times a page.

Or to put it another way, is it well written? No.

So what gives? Why the fuss? Well I think there are two factors.

First up, this was Twilight fanfic with a big following before it crossed over. So that big bunch of peole to buy and get it noticed when it goes live was there beforehand.

Second is that powerful combination of shock value and curiosity. Does anyone remember a band called Frankie Goes to Hollywood? They released a very mediocre song called ‘Relax’ in the 1980s about er… well, giving blow jobs – phnark. It peaked at about number 20 and then started sliding down the charts until the Radio 1 DJ Mike Reid listened to the words one day and stopped it half way though saying. “I’m not sure I should be playing this.” After which point, it got banned and sold in millions.

Why? Because it was good? No. Because no-one could hear it on the radio any more so they all went out and bought it to find out what the dirty words were. It was at number 1 in the charts for weeks despite being shite. So there we are. Curiosity – a powerful marketing took if you can tap into it.

In a nutshell then, the fanfic base probably got the momentum to get it noticed and the curiosity of the rest of us probably carried it further.

It’s not a good bit of writing, and it embodies everything the anti-indie lobby whinge about in indie books.

However, looking back on it, did I care about the characters? Yes. Did I wish it was better written? Yes, because I would have loved to have been able to keep reading to find out what happened. So.. it clearly has something. It’s just a pity that what it hasn’t had, and needs, is a good hard copy edit.

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8 Jul 2012 · 7:02 pm

Have a look at my box. Phnark

OK, seriously then. There’s a little box to your right labelled, “UK Amazon Kindle Webring”. This is a group of websites from the users of a group on Goodreads called the UK Amazon Kindle Forum – now there’s a surprise.

Anyway, you can find the group here

If you’re a British author I can recommend joining. There are lots of really useful forums on the internet where you can ‘meet’ and ‘speak’ to other authors but many of them are American sites, and while there are lots of lovely people on them, they do tend to be so terribly high-minded and serious. So, if you want a bit of levity as well as excellent book recommenations, information, interaction with readers and other authors etc the UK Kindle Forum is a good place to go.

Plug over then. Apologies, I am blitzed. McMini put olbas oil in his eye on Friday night – nimble fingers and an enquiring mind; a dangerous combination. I rinsed his eye thoroughly but we still ended up in casualty. They were great; saw us very quickly and we were home by 9pm but I’m amazed how knackered an hour or two spent worrying whether your son has irreparably damaged his sight in one eye makes a person.

We have now completed the course of eye cream and in return for his bravery I will now have to purchase him a Spiderman T-shirt. Note to prospective parents, bribery works well on small children.

On the up side the olympic flame went past our house yesterday and I even managed to take a picture. See below.

Olympic Torch: Bury

The Olympic Torch goes past my house.

Marvellous.

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1 Jul 2012 · 9:41 pm

Why Can’t Indies Punctuate Dialogue? I Think I Know.

Gah, welcome to the world of Victoria Meldrew. I was reading a post on a forum somewhere recently, complaining that self published authors are rubbish at dialogue. Well, sticking my neck out, I’ve just discovered a lot of my dialogue tags are wrong.

So once again, I am at home to Mr Cock up. Frankly, he’s going to be moving in at this rate. I dunno what’s wrong with me at the moment. I seem to be dead from the neck up.

So, now that I’ve bombed, I may as well tell you what I’ve learned so you don’t have to.

At school – and sodding heck, it’s only 20 years ago – I was taught to write dialogue like this:

“Writing speech is a pain in the arse.” Said M T McGuire.

Sometime, between me leaving school and starting to write books for a living it changed to this.

“Writing speech is a pain in the arse,” said M T McGuire. “Never mind. On the up side, entirely fortuitously it’s right in book two.”

So here’s what Mr Cock up has taught me on my latest visit.

Golden Rule Number 1, then: Even if you left school five minutes ago, question the rules of punctuation you were taught.

After all, you only have to look at how often government policy on education changes to realise that the shelf life of any received theories propounded to you as a child, will probably be out of date before you leave school.

So yes, I’m afraid those rules of grammar that it hasn’t occurred to you to doubt may be completely at odds with the way things are done now. And if they are, you will be looking like a spanner. NB, even if you write business English for a living, check the types of grammar you don’t use in your every day job that you will use in a book. Like speech! Gaaaah.

Can you guess who didn’t do this? For heaven’s sake, I have a very high IQ – I really should be smarter than this. It’s a bit like being one of those people who can build something really pointy-brained, like a satellite, but can’t boil a kettle… except that I haven’t got any satellite-building abilities against which to offset my piss-poor kettle boiling skills.

Bum.

Oh well, on we go.

Golden Rule Number 2: Don’t trust the internet.

Having realised I may well have ballsed up a lot of the dialogue tags in all my work, I tried to find out what was the right way on the internet. All I could really discover is that one, there is a lot of disagreement and two, none of it looks like the way I was taught at school.

You can google a lot of things but not grammar. There are too many strains of English round the world and not everyone knows which is which. Hmm… Which leads me onto number three.

Golden Rule Number 3: Ask the right questions.
Because I remembered what I’d been taught it didn’t occur to me to ask at first but when I saw what the editor had done, and failed to understand what was going on, I did ask her. The answer she gave was that I should treat the whole thing, speech and tag, as a sentence. That was right but it still gave me plenty of scope to do it like this.

“Punctuating dialogue drives me crazy.” said M T McGuire.

Which is still wrong, wrong, wrong.

Golden Rule Number 4: Ask the right people.

I now use a different editor who is pretty good. I was still confused when I first started working with him though. So why didn’t I ask him? I haven’t a blind clue. So when you find someone who knows what they’re doing and you trust ask them. If you can find somebody who is absolutely pukka writing, trad pubbed establishment ask them too.

Golden Rule Number 5: Always be open.

One day I might get this writing thing sussed but I suspect not. Language is a living thing. It’s always going to move and change. So even if you begin to think you know what you’re doing it’s worth remembering that actually, you may not.

Which brings me onto the 6th rule.

Golden Rule Number 6: Always use an editor.

This is really important. Seriously. Unless you are some kind of grammar savant, use an editor. Hell, use two. I do… and beta readers and I’ve still stuffed up. Ninety nine point nine percent of authors cannot proof their own work. Trust me on this. Get somebody else to do it. Then if you have any gimlet-eyed reader friends, get them to look at it.

Golden Rule Number 7: Keep an eye on what you learn.

As you learn more your work will get better and your punctuation more professional. Each work you produce is a shop window on your talent. If the punctuation is a bit dodgy, or old fashioned, it doesn’t reflect well on you so if you learn something new that hits you out of the blue or change the way you punctuate, I dunno, interrupted speech or something, remember to apply it retrospectively to all your work. Not just the one it’s cropped up in.

Sure your skill with the business of arranging words will grow but so will you knowledge and while your actual writing style may change, editorially continuity is best – a house style if you like.

So there you go, in a nutshell, think about what you’re doing. Always.

I hope that helps.

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11 Jun 2012 · 10:33 am

The Overnight Success Myth and Other Stories…

I’m not sure why this has come up now but I’ve found myself discussing the hard work aspect of becoming a writer quite a lot over the past week.

Also, with the attitude of some independent authors and the hardening attitude among readers it has caused, I am beginning to wonder whether self publishing is quite such a smart option. It’s definitely right for me at the moment, but long-term smart? I’m not sure.

Run with me on this, eventually the two thoughts will connect.

Reading the results of the Taleist survey of indie authors, I was interested to see that some ludicrously high percentage of independenly published books – about 75 I think – are fantasy. I’m not sure this reflects the number of fantasy writers out there so much as the number of publishers willing to take them on. Certainly there were very few in 2009 when I was looking at the traditional route and of the few prepared to read a fantasy manuscript, even less, would look at a funny one.

However, whichever way you cut it, it means that any fantasy writer who does decide to look for a publisher will have a lot of competition. In regard to my own work, the standard doesn’t worry me, but setting my talent (or lack of it) aside for a moment, there are a lot of aspects, beyond my control, that make someone like me an unattractive prospect to a publisher. So if you’re grappling with the self or pukka publisher question here are four reasons to think about self publishing over and above the usual ones.

If you take a long time to write a book.
Going on my own experience here, the way I see it is this: If I go on sending my work to publishers for long enough the law of probabilities states that it will click with somebody – but with my business hat on, I can’t help wondering about the other criteria. You see if I was a publisher, I’d be looking for more than just talent, I’d be looking for commitment and that’s where I fall down. Big time. I already commit most of my spare time to being a writer and it’s about… er hem… 10 hours a week. I have the odd weekend, too, so I could score a Saturday book signing every now and again but I would probably have to attend with a small boy (four tomorrow).

Looking at the early Pratchett model, I reckon you have to be able to write a decent book every 6 months at the outset to keep up momentum and to keep your readers – not to mention your publisher – interested. It costs a lot of money to publish a book and until you have written a few of them, the Publisher isn’t going to get much back. So, if it takes you longer than 6 months to write one I reckon you have two options. Publish them yourself or stockpile a few manuscripts that are ready to go before you approach a publisher. Think about it from their point of view, if they like your work that’s good but if you’re prolific you will deliver a return for their investment more quickly. That might be the difference between their giving a contract to you or to someone else.

If marketing your book will get in the way of writing the next one.
One of my author friends is doing a book signing somewhere in the UK on all bar 4 weekends this year. That’s seriously impressive. If anyone deserves to be an ‘overnight success’ it’s this guy but that’s the level of commitment it takes. It’s the level of work I would aspire to if my circumstances were different, in fact I’m kind of envious of him. Oh alright, I’m very envious, positively seething, but I digress.

If you do have a publisher, marketing your book is almost more important than when you self publish. How so? Because they have put their faith in you and if you have any scrap of self respect or honour in you, you won’t want to let them down. You will have to be involved in a very hands-on way with selling your book. So there are two things to think about there. First, even if you want to put in that kind of commitment, can you? If you can’t, will you feel bad about letting your publisher – or yourself – down or feel pressured that you’ve found a publisher and shouldn’t waste your opportunity. This is one of the big factors in my decision to self publish. It’s also why I believe I will have to demurr from chasing establishment endorsement for a couple more years.

Do you need to balance the proportion of your time you spend positively?
Getting said ‘no’ to on a semi-professional basis can be soul destroying. You are probably different to me but going on the vast difference between my ability get a job and my ability to actually do one, I should think it will take me well over 100 rejections before I get a reply from anyone – let alone a yes. I might be able to handle that if I send out my applications in batches. However, there’s a catch. Sure, most publishers want the same kind of things but each one wants them presented just differently enough to ensure that a merge file won’t cut the mustard.

Publishers are getting hundreds of letters from people like you and me every day. Jumping through the hoops the way they want you to is very important. Do it wrong and your application will be filed under ‘B’ straight away. So by the time M T McSpacker, here, has checked and re-checked each application, that’s going to be my 10 hours for the week, and probably my 10 hours for the next week, too. What I’m trying to say is that right now, that’s a daunting amount of work to put into a very negative process. Yes, getting politely and repeatedly slapped down – even if the eventual outcome might be positive – is grim. It’s self indulgent and whimpy of me but I just don’t have enough spare time or confidence to use that much of it, that way, at the moment.

Don’t be afraid of getting left behind.
Kind of an about turn after some of the things I’ve been saying but still important. The hardest, hardest thing to do but very important or you’ll burn out and go mental. You have to take this stuff at your own pace. If you aren’t able to achieve something right now, for whatever reason, relax and concentrate on the things you can achieve.

For me, the publisher question will not go away. It’s good to have the endorsement of a gatekeeper and it’s good for your confidence as a writer. I believe in my stuff or I wouldn’t ever have found the balls to publish it myself. However, I see a little gap in my confidence, a tiny doubt, that will never go away without establishment endorsement. And I see the headway I make trying to get it into brick and mortar bookshops. And I think. Ah.

Hopefully, anyone who does the self publishing thing properly, me included, is going to learn things in the process. Things that may well increase their marketability to a publisher. After all, if you can show some empathy with their viewpoint and the challenges they face, it’s got to help. Maybe, if I understand a bit more about what publishing is about it will make up for the lack of time I have for both writing and marketing.

So, I’ve set myself a realistic target. When the next Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook comes out (2013). Then, if the publishing world is still the way it is now and if my world contains more time, I will spend one day a week on getting a publisher. And I will write to every British Fantasy publisher in that ruddy book until I can bludgeon one of them into saying yes to me.

Until then? Well, I’ll ignore it and hope it’ll go away. I never said I was brave did I?

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3 Jun 2012 · 7:35 pm

Talking about unblocking drains…

How do you unblock a writer?

Things are hectic here at Casa McGuire with a flotilla – or is that a crack – of plumbers, jubilee cakes to make, a birthday party to organise and a very lively three year old to amuse. This does not make for an easy time plotting a book – a fairly cerebral process which takes a great deal of mental application and energy… neither of which I have, just ideas. In abundance. Which is tricky.

When it’s all go and it’s lovely I’m a great believer in giving up and enjoying it. The grey matter should not be forced. So for me right now, it’s a case of tinkering. A sentence here and there, a joke, a bit of conversation. If the brain can’t cope it’s a case of letting it put its feet up and leaving the subconscious get on with it. Sure it’s frustrating but it’ll happen, and probably a lot faster than if I flog my extensively plutzed grey matter.

Meanwhile, I’ll work on something else… unless I’m too blitzed to write at all. In which case, I’ll stop.

So there we are. Difficult things to learn about writing number 63: knowing when not to.

As if to bear me out, when I click post, WordPress gives me a quote from Agatha Christe.

“The best time to plan a book is when you’re doing the dishes.”

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21 May 2012 · 8:57 pm

More Light fluff from McMini

Here are a few more class quotes from McMini.

1 Week ago:

McMini enters the kitchen, crawling on all fours so he can wheel Action Man Motorbike – on said motorbike – up to my feet, where I’m standing at the counter chopping up things and announces.

“Action man is desperate for a pooh.”
“Ah. Right,” I say. “He’d better go have one then don’t you think?”
“Yes.” says McMini and Action Man is turned round and wheeled away.
A few minutes later the loo is flushed and he returns.
“Action Man has had a wee and a pooh because he has a special hole in the back of his trousers where the wee and pooh can come out.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” I say.

A few hours later, McMini comes in looking pensive. He thinks a bit and says.

“Dinosaurs don’t do any wee or pooh.”
“Well actually small fellow, I think they did.”
“No they don’t,” note present tense, “I have looked at all my plastic dinosaurs and not one of them has a pooh or wee hole.”
“That’s just because they’re made by prudish toy manufacturers who want to torture parents by not giving toys any naughty bits so that children ask their parents difficult questions.”

Two Weeks Ago:

McMini trundles into the kitchen with his plastic pretend mobile.

“I am on the phone. I am talking to somebody at my work so you must be very quiet.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Shush Mummy You must not make any noise.
A pause and he says.
“Hello? Hello?” another pause. McMini rolls eyes and snaps phone closed. “He cannot hear me.”

Latest…
“Mummy, I am going to do a pooh.”
“OK.”
“Will you look after me.”
“Alright.”
“This will be a stinky one. It will smell out the house. It will smell so badly that it will kill you and you will die.”

A couple of days later.

“Mummy, I am going to do a pooh. Will you look after me.”
“Alright.”
“Good. I am going to stink you out, it will smell the whole house.”
“Oh dear, I’m not going to die am I?”
“No no Mummy. It is not a kill pooh, just a very smelly one.”

He also has the most lovely way of getting things wrong. So for example, his Star Wars favourites are RD8 and the Lemington Falcon.

Then there’s the very clever grammatical stuff; wrong but very clever.

He says “ear wack”. But as a friend pointed out to me the other day – because her daughter does it – he’s actually being very clever. He doesn’t know spelling so he doesn’t know the difference between the x and the s. So he thinks Ear Wax is a plural.

He also says ‘somebolly’ as in ‘somebolly is sitting here Mummy.’

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18 Mar 2012 · 9:32 am

McMini Says

Some more gems from McMini who is currently hoovering up his supper, or at least, munching it crumb by crumb, at the same speed glaciers move.

He sighed and said, “I have so much to do… I must do driving and eating and measuring and running.“
“That sounds like a packed social agenda.” I said.
“Oh yes I am very busy.”

Then he looked at his toy aeroplane and said.

“That is made in a factory with a machine and then a man puts it in a box and it is sent to the shops for me to buy.” he said.
“Well, yes that is pretty much how everything works.” I said. “Where did you get that from?“
“I watched it on I Can Cook.”

I was quite chuffed that he’s worked out how a factory works from looking at a short segment about packing and shipping bananas.

This morning we were out for a walk and the conversation went something like this.

“Mummy. It’s been raining a lot.“
“Yes hasn’t it? I’m glad it’s stopped now.“
“Yes and the puddles have gone.“
“Yes they have.“
“Where do they go?“
“Well, some of the water soaks away into the ground and some goes up into the sky. It’s the same as the steam that comes out of the kettle when it’s boiling — that’s water too — except there’s not as much so we can’t see it.“
“Ah… I think that’s how rain gets up into the sky, then.“
“Yes, that’s exactly how rain gets up into the sky.“
“Mmm. I see.”

I think he’s probably quite sharp. I quake at the thought of his teenaged years. I will win many arguments when he’s a teenager (not).

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8 Feb 2012 · 2:50 pm

Bla bla Bla BLURB too

Here’s your chance to vote! These are the two blurbs for The Wrong Stuff… Which do you like best? Blurb A, Blurb B or a combination of both. Oh and there’s a free e-book of The Wrong Stuff – in whatever format you like – or a set of snurd post cards for whoever my cat picks from those who comment… phew that was a complicated sentence but I’m sure you get the drift.

<strong>BLURB A</strong>

<em>The Pan of Hamgee is not your average knight in shining armour. Sure he has escaped from police custody and switched realities. Yes he has foiled Lord Vernon’s attempt to kidnap Ruth, the Chosen One; but – a small technicality – he’s completely wrecked her life.

Ruth is unimpressed. Being pursued by Lord Vernon is bad enough. Now, thanks to The Pan, she’s on the run. Unless she can find the Candidate, the person who chose her, and persuade him to pick someone else, her life is gone forever. But the Candidate is in hiding and no-one knows where.

Cast adrift in an alien reality and harried by Lord Vernon The Pan knows he must help Ruth to find the Candidate. Fast. Before Lord Vernon finds her. But it’s complicated. Ruth is the woman of The Pan’s dreams but according to the Prophecies it’s the Candidate who will be the man of her’s. Can he bring himself to unite them?</em>

<strong>BLURB B</strong>

<em>The Pan of Hamgee has escaped from police custody, switched realities and foiled Lord Vernon’s attempt to kidnap Ruth, the Chosen One. Not a bad day’s work, he thinks.

However, Ruth thinks otherwise. Being pursued by Lord Vernon is bad enough. Now, thanks to The Pan, she’s on the run. Unless she can find the Candidate, the person who chose her, and persuade him to pick someone else, her life is destroyed forever. But the Candidate is in hiding and no-one knows where.

Cast adrift in an alien reality and harried by Lord Vernon, The Pan knows he must help Ruth, the woman of his dreams, to find the Candidate, who is prophesied to be the man of hers. And he must do it fast. Before Lord Vernon finds her. But can he bring himself to unite them? </em>

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31 May 2010 · 8:04 pm

Erk

My writing is going incredibly badly, not just a little bit out of kilter but oh blimey I think I’m going to have to re-write the first 50,000 words badly.

It does happen with every book I write but I’ve never had a two year old to look after or had my in-laws turn up to stay for an unspecified time until they find a house at the same moment. Usually I have time to concentrate, this time, not.

Hmm… It seems there are finally too many balls in the air and I’ve dropped the fucking lot.

Oh dear.

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20 May 2010 · 8:52 pm

Taking the plunge

Having discovered the lovely Smashwords is going to charge witholding tax I have been feeling, for some time, that my plan to e-publish my book has been a bit well… to put not too fine a point on it, pissed on. Now though, I have a plan.

So, here’s the deal.  I’m going to serialise my e-book for free, starting the last week in July. Anyone who gets bored reading the instalments can buy a copy of the e-book in advance for £2.50 or, if they really want to push the boat out, they can buy a paperback. Incidentally, the free, serialised, e-book will always be available. My aim is to get it printed for a price that will allow me to sell it for £7.99 and send it anywhere in the world for a tenner!

Terrestrially (is that the right word) I’ll try to sell the paperback locally, my local book shops, a signing, publicity in the local papers, radio and if I could swing it, TV, e-mails to friends, family, clubs etc. The angle being stay at home parent with two year old writes and self-publishes book – might add NCT or the like to the list for press releases then.

I’ve thought about Amazon but because they demand you sell it half price I’d have to list it at £15.99 in order to sell it for a reasonable amount and leave room for costs an their cut, let alone actually earn anything from it.  It all seems to be a bit artificial to me.

So there we go, that’s the plan… I took a big breath and sent off for the ISBNs today… one for each format of the serialised e-book, one for each format of the sold e-book and one for the paperback.

And yes, it’s a lot of money all this printing and isbns and gubbins and I could end up looking a real idiot. It’s sort of daunting and yet quite exciting too.

On a lighter note, scion pointed at my Dr Who mug today and, unprompted, shouted “Darlick”.

I did tell him what a Dalek was – when he was about 5 months old at any rate – but I don’t remember mentioning it since. Even so, clearly it went in.

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