On Sale now - The whole Leech series by James Crawford

Who doesn't love a bargain? I know I do, and on a cold, rainy day (which is what I'm having) there's nothing better than curling up somewhere warm with a really good read.

Today you can get the whole Leech series by James Crawford for 99 cents - well it shows up for me as $1.00, but that's no doubt due to the exchange rate between our countries. In any case, it's a terrific bargain, not to be missed, especially if you like a nice, clean gay romance. 

You can read my review of the first book in the series HERE.

Buy the entire series for the promotional price HERE.

Book review: Domechild, by Shiv Ramdas

The mysteriously intriguing opening of Domechild leads into a powerful exposition of the kind of society towards which we of the 21st century seem to be heading. I don't think I will ever view Facebook quite the same way again.

The book didn't quite sustain its early promise of humour; although it was exciting, and kept one turning the pages, it didn't really stay funny after the opening chapters, not to me, anyway. I had expected it to be a riot of laughter all the way through, based on what someone else had said, but, I hasten to add, this was not a promise held out either by the author or the publisher.

For me, Domechild's real strength lay in its portrayal of a dystopia projected upon features of our world as it now is; like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, it offers a chilling glimpse into one possible future, and does this entertainingly.

I did have some reservations about the ending. The book seemed to me just to stop, without adequately resolving itself; whether this was done with the view to a sequel or not, it is a grave fault in a novel. All the same, well worth reading and I'll certainly look for more from this author.

Book review: The Manson Effect, by Debra Barton

A sound and very complete exposition of all the known facts relating to the Manson murders, this is bound to be of interest to history buffs.

Written in a chatty, informal style, the book relates the events as far as they are known, with sections profiling each of the participants - the perpetrators and the victims. Links are provided to recordings of many of the actual proceedings, transcripts and parole hearings. It's a fascinating read and well worth the price for the paperback. I myself received an ebook from the author for review, but I cannot find as at the date of writing that the ebook has yet been published. No doubt it is coming soon.

For more serious students, the enormous bibliography provided is both an excellent resource for further study and a testament to the author's commitment to accuracy and completeness. Highly recommended.

Trigger warning: this writer uses 'lay' intransitively.

The Manson Effect is available from AMAZON.

Why grammar, spelling and sentence structure really do matter in casual writing.

We've all seen it - someone slips up on his grammar in a Facebook post, someone else lands on him like a ton of bricks, three or four other people go for the someone else with flamethrowers and a massive free-for-all erupts, with undignified ranting and, depending on the forum, perhaps some really good offensive memes. It's one of the most common tropes one can see in writing groups, and yet no one ever seems to be bored with the argument.

Two camps are evident in this ongoing war. The first takes massive offence at any perceived or real imperfection in a poster's English. The second takes the view that the first group are Nazis, have sticks up their arses, and expresses various other views in progressively more vulgar terms.

Without wishing to be drawn into yet another flame war myself, I have to say that I'm with the first group, although with the caveat that this applies only to writers or would-be writers. If a person isn't very well educated, he can be expected to slip up occasionally, and there is absolutely no point in getting all bent out of shape over the spelling mistakes of such a person. Perfect English doesn't make one a better hairdresser, or cook, or brickie's mate. You might be a bit sad contemplating the amount of tax you've paid over the years for state schools, but that doesn't need to be foisted on the person.

But writers. Ah yes - writers. People who work with the written word, who build airy castles made out of words and sentences. People who sell these creations for money. If you are calling yourself a writer, whether published or not, you have, in my view, absolutely no business to be inflicting your illiteracy on anyone. The fact you are in an informal setting has no real bearing on this.

Consider table manners. When you sit down for a quick bite of lunch with your husband, when you're having a solitary breakfast before dashing off to the office - you don't require of yourself the degree of precision and formality that you would bring to, say, a gala dinner at Government House. There is hopefully, however, a minimum standard below which you don't descend, even when alone. You're not going to, for example, shovel up stew with your hands, or drink directly from the milk bottle. ARE you, Virginia? No, although if you're en famille or just with a school friend, you might speak a few words with your mouth full. 

Of course, if you were raised by wolves and don't know any better, people are almost certainly going to cut you a lot of slack about your table manners, and you will no doubt enjoy many happy evenings at Pizza Hut, although you are unlikely to be invited to Nobu any time soon.

But if you do know better, and if you behave like a pig on purpose at a formal occasion (I'm reminded of that truly disgusting scene in The Assassin) then it is deliberate ugliness, like young bogans spreading their legs and burping and farting on the tram; a kind of bullying, or perhaps a kind of vandalism, but certainly rude, uncivilised and hostile. 

Similarly, split infinitives, dangling modifiers and the egregious intransitive 'lay' are, when used by one writer to another, a sign either of overt hostility or of incompetence.

Now I am aware that many people disagree with me about this. You can read an example of the contrary view HERE, both in exposition and in a practical demonstration. Of course I do agree with Hutchinson's assertion that you should be yourself. No doubt you should; but I feel one can be oneself just as well in a clean shirt as in a filth-smeared rag.

Music Review - Bernie Manning 6

It's always a pleasure to receive a new offering from this talented poet and songwriter, and fans of Manning's unique style will not be disappointed in this latest record. From the happy, upbeat 60's sound of The Girl From Londonderry (my personal favourite) to the heartbreaking pathos of You're Just Away, to the beautiful words of Soulful Eyes, we are treated to a range of emotional effects that pretty well spans the possibilities of human response.

One of the things at which this artist really excels is in the evocation of visual imagery and the beauty of nature, and this is particularly evident in the opening track,  Colours, and in Magic in the Moonlight and Winter Blues. 

Afficionadoes of Manning's oevre in general will be surprised and perhaps a little sad at the absence of Jeff Burstin's gravelly street-cred voice, and I must confess to a little sadness myself that there were no Men's Secret Business tracks in this compilation; I adore Manning's witty stories, and cherish a hope that we will see them return in future disks.

The protest motif that distinguished eariler CDs has been very much softened, with only Waiting Room and the very subtle Manly Ferry taking this line. 

Bernie Manning's Greatest Hits, Volumes One, Two and Three, are available from  Bernie's own website, however I could not find any links to the later volumes in the series. The site does have a contact form, however, and the records are also available at Readings bookstore.

Z is for Zombies

Z is for zombies. What else?

Generally speaking, I do not advise writing about zombies. Yes, they do seem to be popular, but is there anything more boring than yet another zombie apocalypse? They are as trite as an ancient evil stirring beneath a mountain. It is possible to do zombies and be original - for example, my friend Joseph Picard has done so, and done it well - but it's not easy. 

I myself once swore I wouldn't touch zombies with a ten foot pole. And yet, I too have jumped on the bandwagon. My short story, Danse Macabre, deals with them. I pride myself on being the only writer who's ever had a dancing zombie cockroach. If you want to read it, it's in the anthology 13 Bites Volume III, which you can get HERE. 

As today is Z day, the final day of my alphabet challenge, I want to do something to do with this story. The six months first publication rights have expired, so it is mine to do with as I will. What I think I will do with it is to put it in my second collection. My first collection of short fiction, Once Upon A Dragon, has received very good reviews and generally been a success. You can get it HERE.

So, today I sit at my desk and I look at what I've got to put in a new collection.  There is Danse Macabre, Authorised Staff Only and Sophie and the Frog, all of which have been published in anthologies and have now reverted to me. There are also two novellas, Operation Tomcat and No Such Thing, both of which are available as standalone e-books. I'm not sure about including them, especially Operation Tomcat, which is to be the beginning of a series. I may include No Such Thing. I haven't decided yet, but whether I do or no, I need at least another six stories. Once Upon A Dragon has twelve stories, and I think that's a good number. So, even if I include both novellas, I need another seven stories for my collection.

I look at what I have in progress. I was messing about with this last December, so I have a list of candidates. There are three stories with outlines done, one in the planning stage, and another one which I think will need to be a full-length novel. There is one drafted and in rotdown and two partly written. There are, of course, various other stories for which I've made notes. And then there is my new story, which I started work on yesterday. It seems sensible to continue with that pro tem, because it's already in my mind, and then when it's drafted I can go on with other stories in the list.

So, here we go on Cinderella. The first thing is to create an outline. I always outline with short fiction. Pantsing is all very well in the wide open spaces of a novel, but short fiction, I find, benefits from a more disciplined approach; the shorter the story, the more rigour is needed.

I pound away and come up with an outline. It's a little rough in spots but it's enough to get me started; as the story develops I think these rough bits will iron themselves out.

So that's it - the A-Z Alphabet work challenge. Completed!

Y is for Young Adult

Y is for Young Adult - or children's fiction, for those of us who are more traditionally-minded. Today is also time for me to go back to work. 

Although I have several unfinished projects, I've decided to start something new. I'm going to try my hand at a fairy-tale retelling. I have selected Cinderella for this maiden attempt, purely on the basis of its widespread and enduring popularity. Something about this story speaks to nearly everyone; I think because it combines so many tropes that are central to the human condition. We have coming-of-age, we have newly awakened love, we have an heroic quest, we have the Turning of the Worm. 

I am not sure what length of story Cinders is going to give me. I'm pretty sure it won't be a full-length novel; I envisage it as a short story, but if there's too much story to fit into that length, then it can be a long story or even a novella. We'll see.

The first thing I always do when starting a new project is to clean up my desk. Today, this is going to be a big job, because it is a right old pig's breakfast.

This is the before picture. A nasty sight.

It takes me half an hour to get it decent. It's an unpleasant half hour, and once again I remind myself that if I would just keep things neat on a daily basis I wouldn't be faced with this every few months.

The After picture. What a relief!

Encouraged, I take a further half hour to do the Wednesday cleaning. Because it's Wednesday - ha! Take that, Flylady! And now I come to the part of a new project that I really love - setting up. You can take the writer out of I.T., but you can't take the I.T. out of the writer. I set up for a writing project the same way I used to set up for an I.T. project, more or less. Here's how I do it:

First of all I clear my desk. Today, I've already taken care of that step.

Then, I create a folder for it in my computer. With this story, I already set up the folder yesterday, because I had a couple of files of the Grimm version and the Perrault version. Of course my story hasn't yet got a title, so I called the folder 'Cinderella Retelling'. It can be renamed once I have a title.

Now, within that folder, I set up an Excel spreadsheet to track my progress. Different pages on the spreadsheet can also be used for other purposes, depending on what I'm doing and how complex it is. The main sheet tracks my daily wordcount and projects the finished length and completion date. Another sheet will be used to keep track of people to whom I've sent a beta copy or ARC.

Then, just because I'm a nerd, I add it into MS Project. Each stage of the work is detailed and a time value assigned. I'm very pessimistic when I do this, and Project tells me that the story will be ready to submit on 11 July. Most of this time is taken up by the six weeks' rotdown, where I leave the completed draft to fester and work on other stuff. I consider this indispensible, and the six weeks is a bare minimum. I also take a few minutes to update the other things in my project plan - the unfinished novel, the book that's with the beta reader, the hardcover edition that still has to have the dustjacket design fixed and the novella I finished last month. Finally, for each stage of the project, I create a task in Outlook. This may seem like a duplication of what I did in Project, but I find that it's easiest to work from Outlook because I will be adding notes to a task as I work. For example, sometimes as I'm drafting I will make notes about things I need to check or fix when I come to do First Revisions.

Now I am all set up and ready to start work on the outline. But first, a break to take Emily for her park walk. That turns out to be the thin end of the wedge - it's a perfect day and walkies stretch on for a long time, so that we're tired when we get home and lie down for a nap together, and then I fall asleep and don't wake up until five o'clock. So much for my productivity. Still, I have an hour before I need to get ready to go out, so I can get started on the new story.

With this being a fairy-tale retelling, I realise there needs to be an extra step in the process. Before I start my outline, I need to be clear on exactly what I'm retelling. The way in which I plan to attack this is to analyse the two versions of the story to get the basic, common elements and reduce it to a sort of skeleton, which will then become the framework of my own story's outline. I have no idea whether this will work, or whether it's the best way to approach it, because it's the first time I've ever attempted any kind of retelling of anything. 

Because of this, I realise that I was hasty in leaving out the physical aspects of setup. I think best with a pencil in my hand, so I will need printouts of the two story versions, and a spiral notebook. That's not a problem; I keep a vast stock of manilla folders and spiral notebooks. Like many writers, I'm obsessed with stationery and have to be physically restrained in Officeworks. 

Here's my physical setup. Can you say 'procrastination'?

After reading carefully through both the Grimm and the Perrault I find that it is the Perrault version on which all the popular versions of the story are based, and I decide to stick with it rather than attempt to synthesize the two as I'd originally planned. The next step is to clothe these bare bones in rags of my own devising. This will take some thought, as it has to be essentially a story of my own; it can't just be a rehash of tired old material. I decide to knock off for the day and let it stew about in my subconscious.

Tomorrow, the last day of my alphabet work challenge, will be brought to you by the letter Z.