I seem to have been roped into doing reviewing books again. I don’t write Horror, but I sometimes read certain types of Horror. No bloody serial killer type stuff, but good intelligent supernatural can be enjoyable and before the Romance genre started pushing in, I always enjoyed a proper werewolf or vampire story.

So, a friend started up a Horror review site and I got recruited. I hardly have time to read much less review, but I agreed to try to do one book a month.

This led to joining a few Horror groups on Goodreads because he wanted a review on something just about to be published. Fine. There are always indie authors clamouring for a review in any genre. The trick is to make sure I would get something I would enjoy reading. I quickly got a book in my hands and did my first review after managing to slip reading 20 pages a day into my already over-burdened schedule. True that I read for pleasure in the evenings, but that requires hard copy. I still read e-books on a desktop application.

Before I knew it I was swamped with notifications from these Horror reading groups. Now, I’ve been quitting a lot of groups on Goodreads because I don’t have the time to keep up with them. I won’t read a monthly selection unless it’s something I want to read and even then it’s unlikely I can do it on their schedule. I’m just too busy writing and film editing, either of which is a full time occupation. I also don’t normally go on the site often anymore as it’s 80% spam and 15% trolling, leaving just the occasional topic of interest to read in groups. I’d like to participate in one group of interest and even bought one book that was a monthly selection some time ago, but I still haven’t read it. I’ve been reading Game of Thrones and one book at a time is all I can do at present.

So, anyway, I’ve slipped some Horror reading in and am currently reading one that is really good. It’s a genre I hadn’t indulged for a while, which I only realised as a result of this recruitment. I decided one day to have a look on Amazon and see what was going free under the Horror category and found five in their top 100 that I thought might be worth a read. A quick look at the samples eliminated one of them, but the others look like ones I may enjoy.

I quit most of the Horror groups because the notifications filled up the inbox of the email I used for that. Yes, notifications can be turned off. It doesn’t stay turned off. Every time GR does an update, all the threads I’ve opted out of get reactivated. So, I just drop the busiest groups. It’s a shame because some interesting conversations do occur in them, but hundreds of spam emails isn’t worth it.

Meanwhile I’m getting very close to finishing my third goblin book. I had hoped to have it out by the end of the month, but my editor has been ill and isn’t keeping up. I’ve got about 8000-9000 more words to write and I’ll be done. The cover is nearly finished as well, so it shouldn’t take long to get the book released once the editor gets started. I don’t anticipate any more major changes and I’ve been correcting any inconsistencies as a result of having to read through again after putting it aside for a film editing deadline.

After that, I want to finish up some of the projects I’ve had waiting for the series to finish. A series takes a commitment and it can be difficult to put all those other ideas aside for an extended time. Some projects have several chapters finished and have been sitting and waiting for a long time. I’m looking forward to getting to them, although I will miss my goblin world. Luckily I have a book of short stories in progress for that. I can go back and visit with a new story periodically, between other things.

I read many readers’ opinions about a variety of specific points that determine whether they will like a book. In the end I write the stories I would want to read, but a little research is always worthwhile. One of the points that comes up often on reader sites like LibraryThing and Shelfari is reader’s attitudes toward a point of view (POV) change.

In critique groups, I’ve found that opinions are fairly evenly split, but both sides agree that if you’re going to shift POV, the writer must either leave a blank line or use a divider like *** between paragraphs to indicate that there is a change. Fair enough. I’ve been guilty on occasion of writing from a completely omniscient POV and including the POV of multiple characters in the same paragraph, but have since developed the habit of separating them more and indicating the shift by one of the above methods depending on whether there is an actual scene change or two POVs within the same piece of action. This was taken to an interesting extreme during a battle scene in Demoniac Dance where skipped lines indicated shifting a progression of the action from one character to another. It stood the test of hard critique.

I do see some readers (I don’t mean readers of my work specifically, but readers generally chatting on a site) that express the opinion that they do not like POV shift anywhere in a book and prefer to stick with a single character. This is often the case with YA and Romance readers, particularly on Goodreads. Personally, I get quickly bored with this sort of limitation, with exceptions. It eliminates books like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones that weave intricate plots around a host of characters and artfully shift POV from one to another so that the reader is given a veritable opera of plot development happening in different places at the same time. This is the sort of Fantasy writing that I would aspire to.

This is probably one of the reasons that YA and Romance readers often don’t get on well with my Fantasy work. I make no claim to writing with the intricacy of George RR Martin or JRR Tolkien, but I do enjoy weaving multiple POV in a manner that will add depth to a story. Perhaps I should change the D initial in my name to a double R? There does to seem to be a trend.

I don’t write all of my stories in the same way. I have a half-finished project that follows just two characters through a series of adventures and I’m perfectly capable of writing in first person and sticking with the single POV. My favourite author who has done well with this is Roger Zelazny, who took us through five books through the eyes of Corwin of Amber, then took us through five more through his son, Merlin. It’s a different skill, and I think an easier one than finding the right balance in multiple POV.

A good writer never stops developing. Practice in different treatments of POV are always good experience. I’m actually hoping to reach the level that I admire in some of my favourite authors through my Steampunk Adventures, as the genre affords easy opportunity to expand on a multi-POV plot.

The irony is that the books in that genre will be in competition with a load of one-dimensional YA and Romance books that fit nominally under the Steampunk banner. Discerning readers that want something more intricate will have to ferret them out, and they will. It may be a generalisation, but people with higher reading levels also tend to have good research skills. Cream rises to the top as they say.

Now that I’ve made myself sound like a hopeless snob, I’ll leave my blog readers with one more thought on the subject. How do you suppose a writer would go about writing an intricate plot with multi-level action from a first person POV? It can be done, but I’ll leave it there as a point to ponder.

Guest blogs are a good way for authors to support each other, but it’s time I made a post of my own again.

I know, fans of the Goblin Series are tapping their foot at this stage. It will be done by the end of May, promise this time. Something came up in March that had a tight deadline and I downed tools on everything to get it done. 1500 words a day for over a month were required to meet that deadline. The irony of it is that I won’t be able to take credit for that work for some time to come, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that it was a job well done and the feedback has been very positive indeed.

No I’m not going to explain. I’m a Scorpio, we have our secrets.

As a result of dropping everything to work towards that deadline, I now have to make up time on my film editing as the sequencing of a film has to be done in order to record ADR (voice overs) and the weather is finally beginning to become more conducive to travel. I will be going to the actors for this and most of them are in Norwich, which is a couple of hours travel for me now.

So, the month of April has me focusing on film editing, although I did write a guest post for someone else’s blog. That one won’t be posted until June, but I’ll link to it when the time comes. It could be very educational for the species of  ‘reviewers’ who attempt to edit other people’s books as part of their review process.

Meanwhile, I will be back to alternating writing days with film editing days in May. If I keep up the 1500 word quota on writing days, I will easily have Power of the Dance finished by the end of May. I need to tune back into the project now, but I also had planned to do some re-writing in chapter one so I might as well start there and read through the other chapters, one per day, after film editing. If I do that for the rest of April, I’ll be ready to continue and finish the story when my writing days start up again.

My ideas file is still getting bigger as I catch up on these various projects. As much as I love my Goblin Series, I’m looking forward to developing some of the other ideas that have been nagging at me to get done.

A writer’s work is never done. One of these days I might have a day off.

I have another guest post today which is a bit of a divergence from the usual Fantasy related content. Anita Lewis is the author of Fluffy, Funny and Fabulous: A Tale of Five Sisters, which is the true story of five sisters from the small farming community of Virgil, Illinois, written in an amusing manner in a similar vein to Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, that have captured the world of literature for many years. It is explained best in Anita’s own words;

I would like to thank Jaq for inviting me to be her guest Author today.  I am not usually a fan of Fantasy but have been feeling the tug to grab her book and dive in. My grandson is into fantasy so I think it might be a bonding experience for us?   If it is even possible to bond with a 13 year old boy?

My name is Anita Lewis and I along with my four older sisters wrote a book called Fluffy, Funny, and Fabulous: A Tale of Five Sisters. www.thefivesisters.net  Our book was published on December 18, 2012 and so far we have been receiving positive feedback as our readers start the first chapter then put it down because they get consumed with thinking back of their own memories of family, growing up, and their own crazy antics as a child.

My sisters and I were raised in the small Midwest town of Virgil, Illinois, USA.  There is 18 years difference between my oldest sisters Helen, and myself, the youngest. When we get together we always get to talking about growing up.   Some of our memories are the same- school, games we played such as hopscotch, jump rope and softball but some memories are really different.

They all remember me as being spoiled and I don’t think of it that way at all.  I just remember I was the best child and my parents loved me Best.

I remember my middle sister, Linda, being so mean, but she thinks she was just helping Mom with discipline.

But as the book and our lives progress we realized that together we are better than any of us as individuals.  We all have our special talents and gifts.   At difficult times we have had to ban together to overcome, such as when nephew Christopher died of a heroin overdose, when our Dad died unexpectedly and when we realized we would be taking care of Mom.

If you grace us by breaking away from your fantasy genre (only for a little while) and delving into our Non-fiction realm, we can be found at the following:

www.thefivesisters.net

http://www.facebook.com/FluffyFunnyAndFabulous

our blog  http://ourfanaticalfam.blogspot.com/   (I have just started this journey)

And of course Amazon.com,  Amazon.co.uk and Barnes and Noble, or directly through our publisher.

www.tatepublishing.com

Thanks for your time and interest.  I anxiously await hearing your memories.

Anita Lewis, co-author of Fluffy, Funny, and Fabulous: A Tale of Five Sisters

Today I have a guest post written by Michael Brooks, author of The Cult of Me and Conversations in the Abyss.The core of the message is something I often state on forums, but is nicely explained here.

Writers are readers too

Or at least they should be.

As writers we should be constantly seeking to improve our skill. The best way to improve is of course to continue writing. But what do you do when you have finished the draft? You read through it to determine how you can make it better. Or you let others read your work so they can do the same.

Reading of course should be an act of enjoyment. As should be writing, if it’s not then it’s probably time to find another pastime. But reading for a writer is more than that. Sometimes it is a tool. While it is said that a writer should write what they know, this is often not the case. Indeed it cannot be the case; in my own writing I have explored the celestial planes. Many writings travel into deep space, or into fantasy worlds.

To enter strange worlds a writer will often research what they need to know. Here reading is a tool to provide information. Beyond this basic learning, reading should also provide an example of what a writer can achieve.

It’s odd; sometimes reading an extremely well written book can upset me. I look at the quality of what the author has written and compare it to my own and wonder if I can be that good. The answer of course is yes, I can.

How?

By reading with a more careful eye. Rather than just reading for enjoyment, I read to see how another author has crafted their words. I’ve also found this with writer’s whose work isn’t as impressive. I notice the errors and realise where I make the same mistakes. The more I see the errors, the more it reinforces the lesson in my mind.

And that helps me become a better writer.

The last and probably most obvious method to improve your writing by reading is to read books about writing. Read and learn the rules of grammar. Even if you’re not an editor, learn some of the tricks. Read how published authors have mastered their craft. Discover their techniques and how you can become a better writer yourself.

And most of all, keep on reading for fun as well.

Conversations in the Abyss is the sequel to the 5 star rated supernatural thriller The Cult of Me 

Stealing Lazarus’s miracle gifted him immortality. Combined with his natural ability of invading and controlling people’s minds this made him one of the most dangerous people on Earth.

But the miracle came with a price. His punishment was to be imprisoned within the walls of an ancient monastery and tormented by an invisible fire that burned his body perpetually. To escape the pain he retreated deep into his own mind.

There he discovers the truth of the universe and that only he can stop the coming Apocalypse.

Buy now from Amazon:

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BCP08JU/

US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BCP08JU/

About Michael Brookes

Michael Brookes is an Executive Producer with a leading UK games developer. Working in games and writing are two of his life passions and considers himself fortunate to be able to indulge them both. He lives in the east of England, enjoying starry skies in the flattest part of the country. When not working or writing he can sometimes be found sleeping. Which is good as that is where many good ideas come from.

Other Books by Michael Brookes

The Cult of Me

For too long he dwelt apart, watched those who passed him by. With his unique abilities he entered their minds and inflicted terrible suffering upon them. They didn’t even know who he was. The game has lasted for years, but now the game has become stale. On an impulse he decides to make a final and very public last stand. After surrendering himself to the police he enacts his plan to seize the prison for his final bloody act. 

There he discovers that he’s not as unique as he once thought.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Third-Path-ebook/dp/B008O7ZVXW/

An Odd Quartet

A quartet of dark short stories (10,000 words) to thrill and chill.

The Reluctant Demon
A young demon prepares to take his possession exam.

http://www.amazon.com/An-Odd-Quartet-ebook/dp/B009QJMMPC/

Yes, I’m overdue for a new blog post again. Those who are waiting for the third book of my Goblin Series will have noted that it is still not released. My apologies to fans of the series. I’m just a few chapters away from finish, but I’ve been interrupted by a deadline for something I’ve been working on for another publisher that falls under what you might call ‘bread and butter’ money.

As much as I love writing Fantasy, it is the non-fiction that tends to create steady (if modest) income. I made my writing reputation on Mind, Body, Spirit titles and have moved on to other non-fiction writing with a more widespread audience. I do enjoy it, if not quite as much as relating a good story.

I’m thinking of posting the title where possible before release, although the cover is not yet ready. Everything is SEO these days and the sooner a title gets into the system, the better.

Meanwhile I’ve also been struggling to keep up my film editing commitments. Juggling too many creative things at once can make one very aware of the inadequate number of hours in a day. It’s amusing really to think of how tired I could get after even a half day of an outside job, yet I will happily work on creative projects for fourteen hours and still be ready to start my day afterwards, if it wasn’t for that twenty-four hour day thing wherein one must fit eating, sleeping, having a social life and most importantly, family.

Yes I have a life. My cats may be able to satisfy their need for attention by lovingly sitting on my desk and ‘helping’ me type, but the boyfriend and daughter would feel neglected if I never came out of my office. Imagine that…

Seriously though, in two or three weeks I will have finished the urgent project and can get back to my goblins. The good thing is that I have increased my minimum word count per day to keep up with this one, so finishing PotD should be a dawdle. I may have to take a couple of days to catch up admin in between. If nothing else, I deserve the rest! Writing is a seven day a week job. Nobody ever said it was easy.

One thing that those of us who have been around a while cannot escape noticing is that terms and classifications change and develop. This is true in music as well as book categories. Once upon a time there was rock n’ roll. Then the category got split between hard rock and soft rock. Soon more specific terms like Metal came into common use and in a few decades time there was a list of categories like Ska, Grunge, Black metal, House, Cybergoth etc.

I’ve watched a similar phenomena grow within reading categories. Once upon a time, people knew what you meant when you said you wanted a Fantasy story. The Fantasy genre has endured and grown in its own ways, but it has also been infiltrated by other genres that use the word ‘Fantasy’ to classify sub-genres within Young Adult and Romance books. This can be frustrating for old school Fantasy fans when perusing the books on Amazon under the Fantasy category where one has to slush through rather a lot of material that ‘our kind’ would not classify as Fantasy at all, despite the stories containing what is commonly referred to as ‘fantasy elements’.

These include YA stories like Buffy that may have witches and magic within the story, yet clearly don’t appeal to the same audience as what we refer to as ‘Fantasy genre’.

I had, let’s call it an exchange of messages, with someone recently who sought to convince me that they read Fantasy because they had read Game of Thrones (a fair choice) after which they cited a list of YA/Romance selections including a Romance series where the characters are half human half fey. This has become a common element in much of the newer Paranormal and Urban “fantasy” genre books that have crossed their classification with Fantasy genre. They are the bane of readers of what we call Fantasy genre who have to read descriptions of books more extensively than was once necessary to make sure we aren’t accidentally picking up Romance books listed under a genre which was once clearly distinct from a very different genre directed at the young women who enjoy reading that sort of thing.

That’s the primary difference. Target audience largely defines one genre from another. Sometimes the exact details of why these young Romance books are a different species from what has traditionally been called Fantasy genre is hard to explain to the uninitiated but like in many things, we know it when we see it.

If I were to say to you; qaStah nug? My fire lizard bristles under the red sun when the denizens of R’lyeh rise and Corwin passes through shadow to lead the Uruk-Hai forth to Melnibone… how many references would you recognise without resorting to Google? I expect that the person putting forth Romance stories as Fantasy will catch the LOTR reference, maybe a few would get one more, but Fantasy geeks are likely to catch all or at least most of them without having to give it much thought.

Wikipedia has a half-decent article on the subject once you get past the first sentence that is no help at all: “Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting.”

All true, but general enough that misconceptions can seep in. The article goes on: “Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genre of science fiction by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific themes, though there is a great deal of overlap between the two, both of which are subgenres of speculative fiction.

In popular culture, the genre of fantasy is dominated by its medievalist form, especially since the worldwide success of The Lord of the Rings and related books by J. R. R. Tolkien. Fantasy has also included wizards, sorcerers, witchcraft, etc., in events which avoid horror. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy comprises works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians, from ancient myths and legends to many recent works embraced by a wide audience today.

Fantasy is a vibrant area of academic study in a number of disciplines (English, cultural studies, comparative literature, history, medieval studies). Work in this area ranges widely, from the structuralist theory of Tzvetan Todorov, which emphasizes the fantastic as a liminal space, to work on the connections (political, historical, literary) between medievalism and popular culture.”

There is quite a lot of relevant information later in the article as well, which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy

My Goblin Series is Fantasy Genre. It is not Romance. You will not find a goblin equivalent of sparkly vampire Edward or hunky werewolf Jacob within the pages of my stories. In Fantasy genre, goblins are typically opposed to humans and with variations from one story or series to another, largely animal-like while being organised to one extent or another as warriors to be feared.

Fantasy readers who have read my series recognise these elements. The goblins are depicted from their own point of view, yet maintain the elements that make them animalistic goblins as well as offering explanations as to why some of their cultural elements are as they are.

For example, anyone who has lived on a farm or has any knowledge of animals in any way knows that animals don’t behave like heroes in Romance novels when mating. They mate for progeny. Cats don’t bring their mates flowers, they gang rape them. Chickens are similarly bestial in sneaking up on their target mates. The goblins are not quite so crass and have the intellect that allows them to recognise the importance of their scarce females as well as a physiology that is close enough to human that it is possible for the two species to mate, but they are essentially animals. There are no romantic hunky green men ready to live happily ever after with a swooning human female. They mate to produce young as any animal will do and there are a few different species of goblins who have odd physiological traits that one would see in the animal kingdom. Nature is a rough place. Most of us know that some spider species actually eat their partners after mating. Can you imagine translating that aspect into a Romance story?

Ironically, there is a young girl in the second book of my Goblin Series that finds herself attracted to a particularly humanoid male goblin (most of them are traditionally ugly), but the fact that it could never work out is part of her story line that carries on into the third book. No goblin from my world is going to magically transform into a sparkly green construction worker named Cliff who falls wildly in love with the heroine and fall to his knees to propose marriage. Goblins do not have relationships like humans.

The goblins don’t waste meat either. In nature, when a creature dies it often becomes meat for another creature. Make of that what you will, I’m not going to write spoilers into my own blog.

I do know people who read Fantasy genre as well as Romance, but they do know the difference. Adding a few fantasy elements to a Romance story does not make it a Fantasy genre story. It is still Romance. The fact that a few newer Fantasy stories like Game of Thrones is being read by younger readers is a good thing in my opinion and may well be the introduction to an old genre for many new readers, but not all of them will develop into Fantasy Geeks. There is a particular mindset that defines the Fantasy fan. We have been pushed into a corner where we have to label our kind of Fantasy as Epic or Sword and Sorcery or even as ‘speculative fiction’ to help weed it out from the new breed of YA with fantasy elements even when the exact categories don’t quite fit and we would rather maintain our ‘General Fantasy’ classification, but we will endure as a species apart.

The trouble this makes for writers of Fantasy is that we have to somehow convey to potential readers that might mistake ‘our’ Fantasy for the fantasy Romance stories that some may seek. Romance readers won’t find what they are looking for in my books. Everyone is entitled to enjoy whatever genre they choose, but I do not write YA or Romance books. I write for the Fantasy geeks, or in the case of my Steampunk for the Adventure reader. While most stories have some form of love interest somewhere in the plot, it is incidental in Fantasy and Adventure and while I never say never, I don’t see it becoming the primary focus of anything I write in the foreseeable future. I write the kind of books I like to read. I write for others of my species, and that means the Fantasy geeks that go to the conventions and recognise the references I scribbled earlier in this post.

So step through the mirror if you dare. Enter the world of the goblins, but beware. People die here. Happy endings are not guaranteed. The goblin world is dark and primal. If the sound of the drums moves you, perhaps you can grok why ecstatic dance is a part of the goblin culture. Bring your sword, but watch your manners. In the goblin caverns, all men are meat.

You would think that my current circumstances would allow plenty of time for doing everything, yet there never seems to be enough. One thing I’ve found among others who have been able to give up day jobs is that the time is quickly filled and we wonder how we ever had time to go out to work.

Part of my shortage of enough hours is because of my filmmaking. If I were to stick to one art form or the other, I would have plenty of time to make significant progress daily on whatever project is on top of the list, but I juggle. One part of me is nearing finish on the last novel of a series, another is on deadline to get a film rough cut by Spring so we can do ADR. I’m actually staying on top of both, but I feel the tug of wanting to do more.

What has had to be sacrificed to keep up with these projects is Internet time. Social networks and forums have become background noise at best. I pop into Facebook briefly, answer any messages from family and friends and scowl at Facebook’s new limited revelation format on my way out. They’ve made it easier for me by filtering what posts I see. There is no longer an attraction to scroll through more than a few entries on my timeline before their adverts bore me. Whatever Huddlesby is, they’re on my boycott list along with anyone who uses those adverts on Yahoo that expand over whatever you wanted to click on. Aggressive advertising techniques are a real turn-off.

I popped into MySpace for the first time in ages a couple of days ago. I knew it had gone to band pages but I was actually going to search for a band within a particular region and they’ve got rid of that facility for a new format. Congratulations MySpace, you finally made yourself completely useless. More time saved. Luckily the one page that mattered had already been backed up through a blog space.

Goodreads is much the same as always, suffering from troll wars. The trolls have a new trick, writing scathing reviews of books already on their target lists as an excuse to add another one-star rating. Apparently one of mine is actually being read by one of the most active trolls. It’s pre-ordained that it will be one star and scathing, so why bother? A look at the person’s book list reveals lots of Romance, Buffy, Wolverine and not a single Fantasy genre book. There would be no chance of the reader ‘getting’ a Fantasy book. They are not my target audience, even if they weren’t actively trolling. They also won’t get the reaction they hope for. So why waste the time?

You have to wonder why some people put so much time and effort into looking for ways to be nasty to people that they don’t even have a personal argument with actually. It boggles the mind that they don’t spend the minutes of their life that they will never get back doing something creative or at least that they will enjoy more than reading a book they decided to hate before they started.

Meanwhile, in the grown-up world, I’m developing a pattern that allows me to spend reasonable time with my family and still get work done. As much as I avoid modern technology, a smart phone is now saving me a lot of the time I would normally spend on a computer doing research and such. Much of the social network checking has been relegated to the phone as well, which cuts down massively on my active participation as it’s such a pain to type a message.

I regard this as a good thing. I never liked the idea of marketing on social networks anyway and my decreased presence hasn’t hurt sales at all. Mark Coker was right. I do find time to look into relevant information like whether tag fests improve Amazon visibility and such.

Time is an important resource and something that cannot be retrieved once spent. This is something a friend taught me long ago, which led to both of us working part time and sharing expenses for a while. When we went our separate ways, I continued working part time and lived on the lower income in order to have enough time to keep up my creative projects. It can be done with an adjustment to one’s materialism needs. It’s amazing how spending the first part of the day writing reduces material needs to nothing more than a medium for writing and a little sustenance. I get more satisfaction from that than any amount of ‘stuff’ that you can buy could ever provide. I consider the time well-spent because of that satisfaction.

I also get a lot of satisfaction from hearing from those readers who share my enjoyment of my Fantasy stories. They are my target audience. I don’t write for Romance readers or Crime Drama readers or many other categories. I’m a genre writer. I write for those with the same mindset that can enjoy the sort of alternate worlds that I create. When my science fiction reader group that meets in real life read one of my books, two members only gave it three stars and that’s ok. One member gave it an enthusiastic five stars and told me how much he had enjoyed it. Those are the people I write for.

I do enjoy honest feedback from those with mixed views, but when somebody really ‘gets it’, the satisfaction is inestimable. Any marketing efforts I do is for those people, to make my books available to them. Those are the people who show up at conventions dressed as goblins. I heard there were a couple of them at San Diego last year. If it becomes a trend, it may be worth investing more of my time in spin-off books for the series.

In the meantime I have other projects crying for completion and of course the filmmaking. Getting the edits done on those first two films is also time well-spent, even if it is taking rather a lot of it. Once they are done, I will never have to use up that much time for a film again. Either they make sufficient profit to pay for more help on future films, or I stick to writing. But that’s a subject for my filmmaker blog.

Writing is something I will always keep doing and consider the time well-spent. If people thought more about the value they get from how they spend their precious time, the world might be a happier place.

I’ve been noticing a growing trend among adult readers for reading YA books. I blame television for this. When I’ve read the first few pages of various popular YA books, I find myself disappointed at the lack of depth and what appears to be a hurry to get to the next explosion.

What has happened to readers? I won’t tar all readers with the same brush though. I’ve noted many discussions on reader sites where I find myself in good company with other readers who enjoy more substance to their reading. There are other fans of Classics and particularly of Dickens. There are readers who enjoy very informative Historical Fiction. I am not the last dinosaur who enjoys multiple subplots.

A good example of this division in readers appears in any discussion of a particular book; Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The reviews and comments about this book are characterised by a few basic opinions: It’s long at over 1000 pages, nothing happens until the last 10% where it becomes wonderful, it’s hard going.

Now my own experience of reading this book is very different to the above. Keeping in mind that I read Dickens, what I see is some very artful use of nineteenth century language that gives the book a particular flavour and a wealth of action going on from the start of the book. I’ve found it fascinating throughout and am looking forward to getting to the last part where so many readers have declared that the action starts. I have a feeling that I might be one of the people who gets the full value of whatever happens, having been intrigued all along with the various twists and turns of the story.

But this example is just a reflection of impatience in reading. It isn’t just the YA books that I often find too shallow while reading first chapter samples on sites like Amazon. I will even venture to say that many of the new breed of self-published writers are churning out ‘lightweight’ material in an effort to put quantity first over quality. Again, this is not inclusive of all self-publishers. In fact, I have read some wonderful self-published books over the past couple of years. But there is a certain breed that churns out what I would have to refer to as pap, which allows them to release a lot of books quickly.

The full extent of this came to my attention when one of this breed of self-pub writers exchanged some unfriendly words with me over a comment on a blog post (not on my own blog). I will be kind and leave her name out of my example, but I’m sure she will recognise herself. Part of her snarky comment to be included a phrase about writing more books. With 14 to my credit at present and more in progress, curiosity made me look at her author page on one of the websites where these exist to see if her comment was hypocritical.

Wow, 38 books. The trouble is, if you look at the publication dates, she churned out 38 books in three years. That averages to a little over a book per month, although the 2009 releases seem to be a few months apart so this woman is spewing out words very fast indeed. I had already glanced at a few samples before noting this output, which is just as well because I wouldn’t want to have been prejudiced in my opinion.

The books are definitely pap, written for uncomplicated minds. Yes, that is a strong opinion. It isn’t necessarily an insult to her readers as many people will read something at a low reading level for pure enjoyment. We’ve all read Harry Potter haven’t we? That doesn’t stop me from being able to absorb the driest of Alchemy Books or from enjoying the convolutions of Classic writers. But what I was looking at was assembly-line writing. You could have stopped in the middle of one of her books and continued in a different one and not noticed a break in the story line apart from a change of names. The characters were simplistic and the generic plots were outright boring. No I didn’t read a whole book. I have limited time in my life and much better things to do than read pap. I read far enough to see what I needed to see.

But this commentary isn’t all about insulting a bad writer, it’s an observation that there are a lot of readers out there who choose to read nothing but pap. This isn’t new. Romance books of the Harlequin and Mills & Boon ilk have existed for a long time and found a wide audience amongst bored housewives. What is different is that the readers of this sort of thing are often writing books of their own now, very similar to each other, and self-publishing them in massive numbers with hope of making money from the effort. Naturally, most of them make very little profit.

Among these would-be novelists there may be some genuine writers. To them I would say that if you want to write a Romance novel, don’t scribble out a quick formula. Add some substance. Gone With The Wind is a Romance story after all, but it is a Classic. Why? Because the author took the time to write a well-crafted story. It was not churned out in a few weeks. Wikipedia says of Gone With The Wind;

“Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926 to pass the time while recovering from an auto-crash injury that refused to heal. In April 1935, Harold Latham of Macmillan, an editor who was looking for new fiction, read what she had written and saw that it could be a best-seller.”

Ok so you don’t want to spend ten years writing each book, but there are some brilliant books in print that the writer did spend ten years on crafting. A good story takes time and work. Quickly churned out pap will always read like quickly churned out pap.

If you’re just in the writing business to make money, run a writing contest and collect small fees. It’s far more profitable than spewing embarrassingly low quality material.

Personally I would rather read a well-written story, and that is also what I wish to accomplish when I write. I write for the story. Not for just me, not for just my readers, certainly not for my detractors. I write for the story itself, so that I can enjoy it as it comes into being and the people who enjoy reading my stories can enjoy what I have to offer.

The story is what matters. However long it takes.

Well, here we are in January and the final goblin novel is just passing 50,000 words. Progress continues almost daily, but this one won’t be churned out fast. Stories write themselves at their own pace, and I refuse to become one of the new breed of series writers that crank out fifteen novels in two years and expect their readers to accept the resulting quality.

I do have writing goals for the year, but after this novel is finished much of my attention will be on film editing as I have a more solid ‘resolution’ to finish one of my films this year. To do that, I need to get the basic cut done on the second film by Spring so that I can start collecting voiceovers while I finish doing effects and such.

My ideas file is overflowing with projects to do ‘next’. They all take time. It’s something I seem to have less of since giving up the day job, how’s that for irony?

I’m actually getting far more done, it only feels like I never manage quite enough as there is so much to catch up with and I do have a family to pay attention to as well. I actually took three whole days off over Christmas, as my daughter was visiting and I didn’t want to ignore her to go work all morning while she was here. I think it’s a good idea for writers to take a little time for ‘real life’, but I also think that a couple of days away from a story helps to let some of the perspective fall into place for what happens next. The first day back on the novel after the holidays I churned out over 1600 words without a break, as it was pouring out with fresh inspiration. I’m leading into the most important part of the book now so my attention is riveted back into the story as the new year is just starting.

I’ve had almost no time for social networking as a result. I try to keep up with fan mail and interviews and such but the general chitchat on forums has waned considerably. My Facebook friends have noticed and wonder where I’ve been. I have to wonder how much the social networks actually contribute to sales when they continue along whether I find time to be on-line or not. My Facebook presence is more personal than marketing anyway, but some of the other sites are meant to develop my on-line professional presence.

Speaking of sales, I came across a post recently from the ridiculous woman who stalks me claiming that I “seem to have dropped the lawsuit.” There was never any lawsuit of course, although I must give her credit for milking a notice from her server very efficiently for whatever rise in hit counts a little controversy can raise. I do appreciate the additional sales it has generated, but still find it amazing that people can be that gullible. Half a year later she still has nothing more than a brief e-mail exchange (carefully edited) to regale her little group of miscreants on why they can justify adding their own fake reviews and ratings to books they’ve never read when that kind of behaviour is exactly what they are supposed to be united against.

You would think that after all the palaver about R.J. Ellory and his fake reviews that an author suing a reviewer would be big news, and I’m sure it would be all over the papers if it wasn’t just a case of smoke and mirrors from an attention whore. But her fatuous blog followers will continue to believe what they want to, never mind the facts or her complete failure to produce any actual legal documents.

I have no time to play with trolls though and had to cut short a new one that appeared on YouTube after my Dragon’s Den appearance was repeated yet again. Best free publicity ever!

So, 2013 sees the Goblin Series nearly finished. I still want to do more short stories, although I think novels work better for me. Still, no matter what else I write, I expect the world of the goblins will continually call me back. I don’t know if any more novels will be written in that world, but if they are they will be outside of the sequential series. I don’t think series books should go beyond three volumes. There may be exceptions, but generally I feel it asks for too much commitment from the reader.

There are a few authors who can write within an established world without making the books part of a sequential series. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are a few examples. I’ll be keeping the entrance to the caverns open as I go to discover new worlds. I have two more Steampunk novels wanting to be written as well as a sort of bizarre Magical Fantasy that I’ve got half finished after years of working on it in snippets, so there is plenty to keep me occupied. New ideas come much faster than time to develop them, as I’ve said many times.

So, what will *you* be doing this year? I’ve got tickets for 4 concerts already so I will leave the house, but mostly I’ll be writing and film editing for 2013. I can’t think of anything that I’d rather be doing.