The Writerly Witch

…and now its time for a little something from Adele 😉

AdeleMariePark Author

Greetings dear fans and writers. Where did we leave off the last time? Oh yes. You had honed your draft, left it to brew …speaking of. Where’s my tea?

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Ah, that’s better. There is nothing nicer than a cup of tea when chatting.

The next important step, darlings, is to send the manuscript in all it’s glory to your beta readers. Before you scream at me that you know this already, hear me out.

Beta readers are worth their weight in tea and you should honor and applaud them. If you are lucky they will point out where the story deviates from the plot or meanders through a meadow filled with wildflowers and butterflies.

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Yes, beautiful isn’t it. Now concentrate.

Once the beta readers are finished with your little darling manuscript you edit and tweak whatever they suggest and…

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Another favourite of mine

All about a sequel…

Have We Had Help?

Futher to my previous Post I’m now re-reading Race Against Time’s follow up ‘The Forgotten Age’ (click on its cover above to find it on Amazon.com). Once again it is another Nick Palmer tale.

By now it will come as no surprise to the more discerning among you that like Race, once it proved popular, inevitably it incurred the wrath of some complete idiots as you will see if you peruse what remains of the reviews, particularly those with one star.

One braindead moron in the United States even had the temerity to suggest that The Forgotten Age denigrates arabs, simply because one specific baddy in the story happens to be based on a well known, highly controversial, bad tempered, less than honest living Egyptian archaeologist, who still thinks that all ancient Egyptian antiquities are his personal property to do with as he sees fit. In other words, who better…

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Capital!

…more from Jim. 😉

Jim Webster

It has to be admitted that living just south of the Lake District, I’m in a really beautiful part of the world. Furness itself with the fells, lowlands, beaches and sea takes a lot of beating, and what’s more the rather ostentatious charms of the Lake District make sure the tourists swarm round the honey pots to our north and don’t clutter up our area.
But yesterday I had to go into the Lake District and due to a road being open which was supposedly still closed; I arrived an hour early for a meeting so just headed straight up onto the fells.

Even in February they’re stunning. Personally I feel that they’re especially stunning in autumn and winter, when the mists and cloud hang heavy and the becks run silver and the whole place is so atmospheric. Not only that but there aren’t all that many visitors. Well not…

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Promoting Yourself

a writer’s personal view on why she writes…

Risky Business

Persimmons – Taste too early and you’ll come away with a mouth full of tannin!!!

itinerantneerdowell

It was a good thing parents never knew the risky things their offspring did growing up. Why did kids do such things? Because kids were kids. Part of being a kid was being impulsive.  The rest, because of peer pressure.

Bicycles ridden across a frozen pond. Sled-riding down a hill and across the same pond. The sled picked up speed on the ice. No thought given to breaking through the ice.

Wild persimmon trees grew everywhere. Ripe persimmons were sweet. Green ones were sour, bitter, and puckered your mouth.  The unsuspecting, double-dog dared to taste, just one.

Green persimmons were instruments of torture, when in the hands of upper classmen.  Why had God made such terrible tasting fruit?  Why were older kids so mean?

Hazing of incoming freshmen wasn’t discouraged, when perhaps it should have been.  Later in college, hazing, once again reared its ugly head.  Pushing pennies with noses…

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There’s No Getting Away From It…

The Introduction…

Have We Had Help?

…it was the right story at the right time. Read the first chapter! You never know, you may actually learn something about why it became an Indie success story back in 2012-13, exceeding 250,000 sales.

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If you have actually been reading my posts, and not merely clicking ‘Like’, or ignoring them altogether as so many do these days, you will know I’ve been busy re-jigging my 2012 best selling short novel (61,954 words) The Seventh Age, a tale involving a race against time itself, with a science fiction slant. While I’m reading it through once again looking for any errors I missed during the re-write, prior to republishing it on Amazon, here is the first chapter.

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Chapter One

In the beginning was darkness

It was the time of the summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge on the plains of Wiltshire. Each year the mixture of revellers hardly changed. First…

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Thinking Aloud On a Sunday

Pete is in two minds…

beetleypete

Books, and reading.

As I have started to read again, after a long break, and because I was reading a book in bed before I went to sleep last night, it is understandable that I woke up today thinking about that subject.

I am not getting on that well with electronic reading. On the plus side, it is great to be able to read an ‘illuminated page’, with no need for additional lighting. And I can store a lot of books on something the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The downside for me is that the page-turning feature can be over-sensitive, frequently flipping back to previously read pages without warning. It also freezes up more that I am happy with, leaving me having to restart, to return to the last page I was reading.

So many of you report no issues with this, I am beginning to wonder…

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The reality of writing

The truth and nothing but the truth…

Have We Had Help?

What is the ultimate conundrum?

When it comes to the book we writers have spent many months working on, sooner or later we are all presented with the same uncertainty. Bearing in mind that this business is extremely fickle,will it sell?

Daily I see countless writers both new and old, endlessly blogging about spending not only a considerable amount of time and effort, but also their hard earned money, on a book they wrote that simply isn’t selling, in the vain hope that what they’re doing will increase its chances in today’s over saturated market.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it until the day I die. If your book doesn’t work, no amount of money spent on changing its cover or having it edited by someone who professes to be a professional (by the by there is no such beast), together with purchasing a number of…

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As a writer, will I ever become famous?

One of my favourite posts from 2016…

Have We Had Help?

One of my all time literary heroes – Eric Blair aka George Orwell  1903 -1950

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Probably not. All that any of us who are serious about what we do can ever hope for is to keep on writing. Most of us are lucky if we make a few pounds/dollars per year. Very few ever achieve fame and fortune. J.K.Rowling immediately springs to mind as an obvious modern day exception to the rule.

Even once you have shuffled off this mortal coil, there are still no guarantees of fame, despite the world’s book shelves being full to overflowing with dust covered books penned by dead writers. But then again back here in the land of the living, so is the list of those who were never read, or are ever likely to be by all accounts, despite the majority of them being gifted writers.

But will anything I write do…

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What Happened To The Well Written Book?

What annoyed me back in 2015, and still does!!

Have We Had Help?

E.L James

Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s what!

Come on now, own up, how many of you read it from beginning to end, and liked it? When it first came out I did what I usually do when a novel captures the public’s imagination, I went to my local Amazon site. Using the ‘See Inside’ option, I began to read the first paragraph of the Kindle version. That’s as far as I got. To say I was appalled would be an understatement. It wasn’t the subject matter of the book that bothered me. There have been many well written examples of erotica across the centuries, if that’s what rocks your boat. It was the simple fact that Fifty Shades is so poorly written. Having said that, I must congratulate Erika for writing a book that has sold in its millions.

Now it has been made into a movie, it evokes…

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