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The Town of Hartmouth

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This Monday morning, my mind is on the fictional town of Hartmouth (heart in mouth), venue of my Hartmouth Horrors series. And I just want to expand a little on how it came about. When I started writing Eyes Wide Open —which I had no idea was going to be part of a series—I wanted a setting that felt familiar to me. Somewhere I didn’t have to spend too much time and energy rendering and researching. So it made sense to stick to my roots and base it on the places I know from growing up in South West England. I have a feel for the lay of the land, the pace of life, the way the people act and speak. So I basically cherrypicked the things that would serve the story, a seafront, a harbourside, a train station, some older properties, a small town centre, a graveyard, a hospital, a university, and so on. Then, when I started writing The Devil in Mia and decided to use the same setting, I simply added to what I already had. Cliffs and coast to the south west, houses over by the rail embankment...
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Sketch or Photo?

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This Monday morning, my mind is on a poll I ran recently asking writers whether their work was more like a rough pencil sketch or a photographic oil painting. The reason for my wondering comes from something I once watched on the idiot’s lantern that really stuck with me, so here it is, an anecdote with at least a passing relevance to the world of writing. As a disclaimer, though, this is just my recollection of what I saw, and my memory is quite the fabulist. So, many moons ago I caught the last few minutes of a daytime TV show, a contest in which three artists were charged with doing the portrait of a guest celebrity. The first was using watercolours, the second acrylic paints, and the third oils. They’d just finished when I tuned in, and the celebrity was looking at each effort in turn before choosing his favourite. Portrait one, the watercolour, was really good, at least to this layman’s eye. The artist had done a pretty faithful rendering, capturing the pose and expression nicely ...
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Looking for Connection

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This Monday morning, my mind is on the fact that someone just subjected one of my books to over two hours of less than complimentary video analysis, as well as covering it in some blood-like fluid and driving a knife through it to create a thumbnail image. And rather than piss and moan about this—which, trust me, I’d really love to do, being as big a crybaby as the next man—I’ve decided this is a good time to renew my commitment to being a positive presence in the indie writing space. Yes, I’m primarily here for myself, to promote my own writing, so this isn’t some heroic declaration. But I don’t think that’s incompatible with putting my best foot forward along the way. After all, a love of telling stories and a desire to build an audience for them is ultimately about looking for connection, at least in my own case. If I can find others who love what I love and get what I get, that’s pretty much job done, right? The sales, the relative popularity, are simply a byproduct of that. So the...
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Loving It

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This Monday morning, my mind is not at all on this blog, since I’ve just started the next draft of Drudge and am already consumed by it. So, rather than half-assedly flap my gums about some writing-adjacent issue or other, I’m going to whole-assedly, and hurriedly, flap my gums about how much I love what I’m doing. After a month of not peeking (much) at my first draft, and having already incorporated the large-scale changes suggested by alpha readers, I can now begin to sprinkle in those creative flourishes, cut out any repetitious words and phrasings, finesse the prose for accuracy and flow, and generally whip the manuscript into shape. At a pace of around 2,500 words a day, and being that Drudge is a fairly short novella, this means I should have a draft ready for beta readers by next Sunday afternoon. And by that point, the last of the heavy lifting will be done and I can turn my mind to other bits and pieces, such as tweaking the blurb and the cover art. So yeah, that’s it. Seven...
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Keeping It Simple

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This Monday morning, my mind is on a tweet I read about modern readers passing over quality prose for something simpler, or words to that effect. By asking the OP, I was able to narrow down ‘simple prose’ to that which takes little or no effort to read (sounds pretty good to me, not gonna lie), and this got me thinking about something dear to my heart, namely text readability. For a bit of context, I started writing in my early twenties, and I really wasn’t very good at all. Not only did I not have much to write about—something that’s improved after a long hiatus—but my prose was heavily on the purple side. That was, until I attended a short talk on text readability, which was a real game changer for me. Turns out I was making two main errors that were leading to chewy, hard-to-digest prose. One, far too many words with high syllable counts. One or two of these bad boys here and there doesn’t make for much of an issue, but stack them up and the cognitive load on your readers really doe...
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Inelegant Variation

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This Monday morning, my mind is on elegant variation, a term coined in the early 1900s to describe the using of synonyms and substitutional phrases to avoid repetition in prose. Taken with a pinch of salt, it’s not such a bad idea, but taken to the nth degree, it can produce some pretty hilarious results. And unfortunately, it seems to crop up a little too often in indie writing. Let’s take a moment first to consider the writerly avoidance of repetition. I don’t know exactly why we do this — and if there are solid, well-researched answers out there, I’m too idle to look for them—but it appears that we do, at least in the Anglophone world. When I notice recurring terms in quick succession in my own writing, I find myself cringing and doing what I can to remedy the situation, and I strongly suspect that you do too. So, accepting that repetition is something we want to avoid, what’s to be done about it? Well, I never envisioned this weekly blog as a writers’ advice thing, so I’m not about...
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Drafting and Editing a Hartmouth Horrors Novella

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This Monday morning, my mind is still on my current work in progress. There’s a fair way to go yet, but the wheels are well and truly in motion now. And it’s those wheels, or my drafting and editing process, that I want to talk about. Is it a unique approach? Will it suit every self-pub writer? I doubt it. But if it helps just one, I’ll consider this worthwhile. The first step, once I’ve designed the cover and roughed out the blurb, is to get started on draft one, and I’m happy with about 250 words a day, though I may write as many as 1,000 once in a while. Those words get a quick edit at the end of each session and again at the start of the next, and a couple of times a month I’ll go through the whole thing from the very first page. Next, when draft one is complete and I’ve edited one more time from start to finish, I’ll send a copy to alpha readers, incorporate their feedback as and when it comes in, then put that draft on ice. After about a month, I’ll start draft two, changing ...
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The Importance of Alpha Readers

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This Monday morning, my mind is on Drudge , the third novella in my Hartmouth Horrors series, and I’m pleased to report that the opening draft is finished. Which means it’s now with alpha readers and is no doubt getting its ass beat. And that’s what I want to talk about today, the invaluable service that these lovely people provide. First, let me define my terms, as writers tend to have varying ideas on what these readers are. For me, an alpha reader is someone who gets a first draft then goes to town on it, not focusing on interior decor but on architecture. They tell you what they love and hate, what they feel is missing, what they ’ d like to see changed, and so on. Which leads me to the next point, and that’s the importance of sharing that early draft. Some writers hate the idea, and fair enough. It’s still raw and rough, not ready to be seen by the outside world. But it’s also supremely malleable, and any decent feedback is surely easier to put into effect before the thing has gro...
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