#WritingCommunity #QuestionOfTheDay: To Plot Or Not To Plot?

More from the lovely SZ 😉

Writing With Hope

There’s a huge debate in the writing community whether or not having a very detailed plot outline is invaluable or a waste of time. Does it really make a book better? There’s a new story idea I’ve been toying around with and so I’d considered plotting out my next manuscript.

With my last one, I sort of had to do a super light outline because I had multiple POVs and a dual timeline. But it was the second book in a duology, and so I already knew the characters. It’s a lot different if you’re writing out a series and you already know the characters, the storyline, and kind of know what he/she would do next. It’s a lot harder to start from scratch when you are simply going off of a brand new idea that you haven’t quite fleshed out.

Some writers are detailed plotters and prefer it this…

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The Twenty-third Chapter

The twenty-third chapter – just three more after this …

Have We Had Help?

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Chapter Twenty-three

An Old Foe Returns

Five weeks after they had left Rize on Turkey’s northern coast, the weary and dusty party finally saw their goal in the distance. Göbekli Tepe sits at the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge, fifteen kilometres northeast of Sanhurfa in south-eastern Turkey. To this day it is still the oldest known human place of worship yet discovered.

From their hideout across the valley, they would wait until Hakan’s workforce had left for the day, before announcing their presence. Through his binoculars, Nick could see his old friend directing the dig’s operation from his command centre beneath a simple open sided tent at the centre of the excavation. Hakan sat on a canvas camp stool at his folding table under the canopy of his tent, pitched on one of the polished limestone floors at the monument’s centre. As dusk fell, he was busy…

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‘His Ladyship’ is Now Available for Pre-Order.

Stevie’s latest publication. 😉

Stevie Turner

My new LGBT novel, ‘His Ladyship‘, reached the Longlist of the 2021 Page Turner Awards and is now available for pre-order at the special price of just £0.99 /$0.99 until October 24th, when the price will rise to £1.99/$2.99:

You can find ‘His Ladyship’ here. Thanks to Phil Huston for the edits and Teagan Geneviene for the cover.

Norman Wicks is 57, overweight, and has diabetes. He is sick of his life. He has never left home, had a girlfriend, or held down any kind of job. The only friends he has are online, as he prefers to stay in the comfort zone of his bedroom. His devoted 92 year old mother Agnes waits on him hand and foot.

Norman has a secret he has kept hidden from the world for the majority of his life, but now he is desperate to bring it out into the…

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The Twenty-second Chapter

Chapter the next…

Have We Had Help?

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Chapter Twenty-two

By night and by goat trail

Their Kurdish guide, Esrin Goran, was originally from a village just north of Tikrit in Iraqi Kurdistan, the birthplace of the legendary Saladin. In other circumstances, David would have avoided him at all costs. Fanatical men like Esrin were dangerous in the extreme. Had Katya been by his side, maybe he would have felt slightly more at ease. After all, like Ithis, she would protect her man with her life if need be.

Esrin’s religious intolerance of all who were not true believers had been curtailed at least for now. Outwardly he shared an unshakeable belief in Nick’s quest, hiding any loathing he felt for all unbelievers, since Ithis had entered his mind several days before their arrival in Rize. To say that he was completely terrified by the whole experience was a major understatement. Up until that point in his…

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Publication Day|Book Review|The Syk’m|Richard Dee

A new book from a mate of mine – Richard Dockett

CookingTheBooks

Please join me in wishing Richard a very Happy Publication Day for his new, debut YA Fantasy novel,The Syk’m. I have followed Richard for a while across social media and this is actually the first book I have read by him.

Published 15th October 2021 Publisher 4star Scifi Pages 254 Edition Ebook/Kindle Genre YA Fantasy Purchase Link mybook.to/the_sykm

Blurb

Behave, or the Syk’m will come and take you away.

That was the threat hanging over my childhood, the terrifying punishment that made us all obedient.
As children, we were told that the Syk’m watched over us. Should we misbehave, they could do unimaginable things.

Because we were young and knew no better, the mere mention of their name was enough to control us. We went to bed, minded our manners, stopped our shouting.

Although the Syk’m were mythical creatures, never seen, we all believed in their power over us.

Now…

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The Twenty-first Chapter

Another chapter of my seminal work anyone?

Have We Had Help?

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Chapter Twenty-one

A dangerous passage

The seemingly unstoppable countdown to destruction was rapidly drawing to a close, with barely four months left. The short trip between the Dnieper delta and the old port of Odessa was made in the moonlit early hours of the last day of August 2012. Victor steered as close to the shoal waters of the coast as he dare.

Odessa is still a major Black Sea port city. It had been settled in 1240 by the Tatars under the leadership of Haci I Garay – the Khan of Crimea. The city is the fourth largest in Ukraine. It was won by the Russians in the Russo-Turkish war of 1792. There are two ports; one taking the name of the city, and the relatively new port of Yuzhne, a vast internationally important oil terminal situated in the city suburbs.

The old port was the destination for…

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#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth: Depression In Writers & Why It Sucks

Depression – the writers constant companion.

Writing With Hope

October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s a subject that is deeply personal to me.

I wish I could say that I wake up every morning smiling from ear to ear. I wish I could say that I have an infectious laugh, a bubbly personality, and skip everywhere I go.

I wish I could say that winter weather doesn’t affect me and that COVID didn’t affect my mental health. I wish I could say that I don’t mind isolation, that I can celebrate everyone else’s success with a huge fucking grin on my face, even though all the while I’m feeling like a big fat failure.

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Back in the saddle

My Beautiful Muse

Ok – I’m back where I feel happiest – writing the next chapter in my WIP East Wind. I’ve deliberately sent my anti hero Olav/Bill off on another sea voyage accompanied by his daughter Tilde. This clears the way for what I have in mind for his grandmother-in-law and his wife. It isn’t pretty…

What I’m trying to decide is how they both die. I’ve already decided where it happens – a five star hotel in Singapore which you will find out about when you read the book. I have a few ways to choose from so far. My ultimate goal is to clear the way for Bill to meet the transgender woman I have in mind, and hopefully fall in love with her, or at least in lust. I haven’t established how little Tilde will react to her as yet.

Well thats about it for now I have two deaths to work out. More later…

Progression or Regression?

More from the lovely Stefie xx

e-Tinkerbell

• 

I fell asleep. I fell asleep and for a couple of months I have been lulled by the sound of waves, sun  kissed. I fell asleep and fluttered every single day on leisure-land where a pleasant and reinvigorating breeze weakened  any  attempt of the few sensible thoughts left hidden somewhere in a synapse of my dormant  brain to make me quit that state of bliss. I would have slept even longer, in fact, but for that annoying bell, a school bell, actually , which forcibly brought me back to the dullness of the real world and duty. Good-bye leisure-land, I must go, uncertain of my fate.

When  you have to start afresh, it is advisable to begin with baby-steps, something effortless and pleasant, if possible, at the same time, to break the ice,  otherwise one always tends to postpone the initial effort, which is usually perceived as huge.  I thought that…

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The Twentieth Chapter

Getting closer to the ‘End’…

Have We Had Help?

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Chapter Twenty

The long road south

All thoughts of heading to Japan, Korea, the Indian subcontinent, and on to the Sumerian hub in Iraq where now instantly forgotten as they began heading back to Nicolai’s home in the Ukraine. The perilous journey took over three months under Ithis’ expert guidance across country. Often, she had to leave them hidden as she scouted out the terrain ahead. Once they were relatively safe back across the border with the Russia Confederation, she left them in a small hunter’s lodge, deep within the wooded hills of the Siberian Taiga while she contacted Nicolai, who sent his Mil-Mi24 gunship to pick them up.

On their return, Miles was waiting for them. He had gone to north Norfolk to seek out the author of the disturbing report. “So what happened,” David asked, as they all sat apprehensively, eager to discover if Simpkins’ report was…

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