Yesterday I watched The Big Country on tv and thoroughly enjoyed it even though I knew the story. Made in 1958 with Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons, it also had Charlton Heston who over-acted throughout. About two thirds of the way through I realised how relevant it was to today's American situation - the gun rules. It seems the gun has always ruled in the USA, right from the days of the first settlers through the cowboy era and Mob rule to shooting JFK and RFK, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Lennon and on up to the last decade when suddenly mass killings are the thing, no doubt because people can buy machine guns.
I am keeping this short today because the technology is slow, possibly overloaded - so here's wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013!
Monday, 31 December 2012
Friday, 28 December 2012
Christmas & Social Media
It's time Christmas was gone. We're at the boring stage now - soggy wet weather, wind and rain, temperature around 5 degrees C. Fridge full of leftovers or odd scraps that won't make anything else. People getting crabby with too much food, too much wine and not enough exercise. TV mostly rubbish aimed primarily at kids.
Did my best. Can't help or change the weather, but regulated my intake of food and wine, took a walk every day. Yesterday stopped a young dog from plunging into swollen stream to reach young owners searching for him - the chances of being swept out into the nearby river were pretty high.
Did some work every day, too. Going back to Twitter this morning, noticed how several people keep trying to stop authors promoting their books. Don't understand their logic when they promote a) themselves b) their own authors and c)what they had for breakfast lunch and dinner. That's interesting? To whom? The truth is that everyone on Twitter is promoting something, even if it is only themselves. The urge to join in is there, and if a book is the only thing you have to talk about, then why not? Nobody is forced to read what comes up on Twitter. I skip a lot of posts to find the ones that hold some interest for me. Live and let live, I say.
Did my best. Can't help or change the weather, but regulated my intake of food and wine, took a walk every day. Yesterday stopped a young dog from plunging into swollen stream to reach young owners searching for him - the chances of being swept out into the nearby river were pretty high.
Did some work every day, too. Going back to Twitter this morning, noticed how several people keep trying to stop authors promoting their books. Don't understand their logic when they promote a) themselves b) their own authors and c)what they had for breakfast lunch and dinner. That's interesting? To whom? The truth is that everyone on Twitter is promoting something, even if it is only themselves. The urge to join in is there, and if a book is the only thing you have to talk about, then why not? Nobody is forced to read what comes up on Twitter. I skip a lot of posts to find the ones that hold some interest for me. Live and let live, I say.
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
It's up for sale! Victorian Beauty

Here's the blurb:
"Damaged physically and sexually, Melanie, the Dowager
Duchess of Yaxley, escapes from an abusive
son-in-law to become a housekeeper in a remote Northumbrian village. The Master
of the house, Jarrow, is a widower with a delightful daughter, but few funds. Jarrow has his scars, but he also has a secret life that
unnerves Melanie when she discovers what it is that occupies his nights.
This historical romance with its great sense of time and setting, leads the
reader through the clash of the scarred personalities, troubles with excise men
to a resolution which surprises them both. Slowly
Melanie realizes that Jarrow might just be the man who can make her believe in
second chances."
The blogger award depends on linking to fellow bloggers, something that completely slipped my mind in all the frantic activity of the last few days. While I read and enjoy the blogs I mentioned, I'm not sure how to reach some of the people, but I'll give it a try.
Something else ~ a little Christmas present ~ sometime today Shadows will be free on Amazon Kindle. It is scheduled for two days from midnight on 25-26th December Pacific Coast time. Lets hope that works without hitches!
Monday, 24 December 2012
Seven things about me....

I’ve been awarded a Very Inspiring Blog Award from the Very Inspiring Blogger, Jean Bull. Thank you, Jean!
In accepting this I have to write seven random things about myself, and that’s never easy. First thing is that I don’t like cooking. I’ve been known to put a pan of vegetables on to make soup and then walk away and forget it until the pan exploded all over the kitchen. I wouldn’t cook if I didn’t have to eat. However, I do like eating, so cooking is a necessary evil.
Second thing is that I love driving. The actual pleasure of manoeuvring a car with everything at the optimum. Might not happen often, but I always strive for it. Taking a tight curve on the hill coming home and getting it right instead of muffing the gears and stuttering for the next twenty yards brings a grin of pleasure to my face.
Third thing – I hate going out to a “do” where the so-called music is pumped out so loud that even though you shriek (possibly doing damage to the vocal chords) the person sitting two feet away across the dining table cannot hear you.
Fourth. I’m persistent, so I’m not going to give up on trying to get my historical novel published by a reputable publisher in the UK. So agents beware, you will be targeted sooner or later!
Fifth. I’m happy to go on self-publishing my romantic historicals via Amazon’s Kindle. There’s a new book due out very soon now – just as soon as I can write a half-way decent blurb to go with it. It’s called Victorian Beauty.
Sixth. Closet Strictly, Merlin, The Killing and Last Tango in Halifax fan, that’s me. Not so enamoured of Hobbity or Ring things. In fact I never finished the third story in the trilogy, so that probably puts me well into the outer darkness for all Tolkien fans. Looking forward to Borgen part 2 in the New Year.
Seven. Finally, finally, have I told you I hate tomato skins? Cooked, uncooked, either way they’re dreadful slippery nasty things. Almost as bad as the skin on custard.
I now have to nominate some more people with Very Inspiring Blogs, so I choose:
Anita, Dean, Nicola, Janet, and Sally. They may not know I read their blogs, but I do and I truly find them inspiring. Hopefully they won’t be too busy meeting deadlines to join in the festive fun.
Friday, 21 December 2012
More on that Deep Third
![]() |
Moody winter scene |
Get rid of those tags and the reader is so much closer to the character – gets more involved in what’s happening in the story and deeper into the character’s mind and heart.
But it worried me that being always in a character’s thoughts and emotions for the length of a story might be OTT (Over the top). I want to draw back sometimes, and look at the characters as though from a distance. I like the idea of opening a new chapter or scene as if from a great height and I didn’t want to give that up, because I think it gives something to the story. Puts the characters in their world, perhaps, gives the story a different perspective. Perhaps it comes from watching films, or perhaps it’s because I have a visual sort of mind, but anyway, I tried it and it works for me. From there, it’s easy to spiral down and climb back inside the character – whichever one it is.
Viewpoint characters can change, ought to change. A single character’s viewpoint risks becoming boring, and if, like me, you prefer to write of several major characters rather than just one, it’s intriguing to work out their thought processes just as you would have tried to make their dialogue personal to them. But I stick to one character, one scene, and don’t headhop. That would confuse me, never mind the reader.
I puzzled over using italics and have decided that I don’t need them unless my character suddenly decides to think of himself as I. He might. I sometimes do it myself, as in I don’t like that comment, or that dress or I simply hate the skins on tomatoes. (It’s true, I do.) If he goes for a first person sentence, then I’ll use italics for that sentence.
So now I think I’ve finally got a grip on Deep Third POV. It isn't as restrictive as I first thought, and that's good. Phew!
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
That tricky Deep Third
![]() |
Winter fields |
I’m
willing to bet I’m not alone in this - when a critiquer points out that my POV
has slipped, my immediate reaction is, No it hasn’t! But then it gradually
sinks in that the critiquer is correct, and I guiltily alter the wording to
suit. Sometimes, occasionally, very occasionally, I look and think,
No, it is better as it is.
It
is easy to get confused about POV. All this talk of Deep Thirds and Omniscient
can make one’s eyes glaze over and sleep is only an eye blink away, but today’s
reader tastes must be considered. There was a time when authors could write as much
Telling/Narrating as they pleased. Read any book written and published prior to
the last decade and you’ll find the stuff I mean all too easily. Jane Austen
and her colleagues are excused of course, because they are among the legendary
Classic Writers. But try authors of the fifties and sixties – they headhop like
mad and include info dumps without apology – things we wouldn’t get away
with today.
The powers that be – whoever they are in the writing world - claim that having a narrator creates a distance between the character and the reader and that readers are put off by this. At its worse, the author gets onto the page and tells the reader what the character thinks or does. This is the dreaded Author Intrusion. Of course some very famous books have used that style because it best suits their story. 'Dear Reader, I married him' springs to mind.
The
aim is to have a reader “walk in the character’s shoes”- and I know which
publishing house coined that phrase! So to achieve this close connection
between character and reader, we have Deep Third POV, where thoughts and actions are
not given by a third party who seems to hovering above the character and
telling the reader what’s going on. Oh, no. Thoughts and actions are delivered
by the character, as in the examples below from my latest work Victorian Beauty due to be published very soon:-
“With
a frustrated sigh, Melanie gripped her bag firmly, brushed through the low
hanging branches and strode out across the lawn. If she were shot for it, she
would not follow that drive an instant longer.”
“His
eyes narrowed, and Melanie’s stomach clenched in response. Her tone had been a
little too pert. Lord, it was so difficult to strike the right balance.”
I'm told the
need to use italic font disappears when using Deep POV. Direct thoughts in the first person are usually rendered in italic font, and are really not necessary if you've really grasped Deep Third. Sometimes I’m tempted
to switch from the third person into the first person, as in:-
“Melanie gripped
her bag firmly, brushed through the low hanging branches and strode out across
the lawn. If I am shot for it, I will not
follow that drive an instant longer.” If I need to use italics, I've learned it is a
clue that something is Not Quite Right.
I
look at the examples I’ve given and wonder if they are strictly Deep POV. perhaps there's an English version of Deep POV and an American version. I
think I know the theory, but in practice I wobble a bit, and as I said at the
beginning, POV can be utterly confusing. I think my reading history over the last xxx years inclines me to something that is almost Deep Third, but not quite.
However,
one good thing that happens when writing Deep POV is that Telling virtually disappears
except where you really need it. When you’re explaining something that
gets your character from A to B, perhaps, or something mundane that must be mentioned but
doesn’t require detail. It's Good and Useful then.
Ah
well, off to practice some Deep Third POV.
Monday, 17 December 2012
Social media and writers

There’s
another suspicion I have though; that other media are attracting people away from blogs in general. Not only
Facebook and Twitter, but mysterious things called Pinterest and Tumblr. I have
no idea what they are and I’m not about to find out. It is easy enough to waste
time on FB and T without joining more things! If this is the reason, it is something I cannot change.
I can scroll through a lot of posts and pick out what I’m interested in and ignore the rest. That may sound rude, but as people follow me, I feel obliged to follow back – it seems only courteous – which means I get loads of tweets from people I don’t know about things I’m not interested in.
But turn it the other way about and it also means there are a lot of people seeing whatever I choose to put out. But there’s the difficulty - as far as Tweeting goes, I’ve never really got the hang of it. How to say something engaging and witty in 140 characters defeats me, but others seem to find it no problem at all. I sit and stare at the screen but nothing comes to mind. I'd never make an advertising person!
Friday, 14 December 2012
An unaccustomed blast

Against all this mayhem and madness, the closure of the odd library doesn't seem so very important. Here the Guardian states that the UK has lost over 200 branch libraries this year and 146 the year before that. In my own region, Newcastle is threatening to close ten out of the city's eighteen libraries. The city council seems to be making more effort to save the Christmas lights than it is to save the libraries. If companies can be persuaded to fund the Christmas lights, why can't they fund a branch library? Would it be so bad to have a Fenwicks library or a John Lewis, even an M& S library? Better than no library at all, I'd say.
Since I appear to be on a rant, let me add that I've always thought Christmas lights are a waste of energy. Buy energy saving light bulbs, they tell us. Switch off unwanted lights, turn down the heating in rooms you don't use, half fill the kettle...and then all over the country they go and blast the sky with unwanted light in the name of Christmas. Everyone seems to have forgotten it's a religious festival and pretty, sparkling lights don't matter. Grrrrrrrrrrr!
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Endings

‘It is already written,’ Melanie
said with every appearance of simply stating a truth. She caught Adam’s eye. He
knew it was a blatant lie, but his smile told her he approved.'
Tomorrow, of course, I might think of something even better. It is always difficult to know when the definitive ending is there in front of you, because there's always the temptation to think that you could do better if you just thought about for a few more days...but that way, nothing ever gets finished and nothing ever gets published. Re-writing could go on endlessly and it doesn't always mean the work will necessarily improve.
Deadlines are great, because they impose an end point.
But I'm pleased with this story. Set in Northumberland in 1864, it begins with Melanie arriving at Gavington to interview for the post of housekeeper to Lord Jarrow. She has something to hide, and so does her potential employer. Both are strong characters, and they need to be when her past catches up with her and threatens to expose Jarrow as a smuggler of illicit whisky.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Books in the style of....

I suppose the fans and the publishers will be happy as the money rolls in, but where is the integrity in this? What if D H Lawrence had hired co-authors to write for him? Or Jane Austen? Would we admire their later work if we knew this is what had happened? The Mail snarkily suggests that Smith's fourth wife, who happens to be 39 years younger than her husband, is a major factor in this new idea. Since he is 79, it doesn't take a particularly snarky mindset to see where she is coming from!
It will be interesting to hear from fans once the first book written in this new way is published. Will they be able to tell the difference between a co-authored story and a true Wilbur Smith tale? What about the Patterson, Clancy amd Cussler fans - were they able to spot the difference? One would hope so, for we're constantly being told that an author's voice is a major part of their selling strength. The other worrying thing is if co-authors can imitate an author's style so well that the fans cannot detect any difference - then where will it end? Is there scope for re-surrecting a well-known and loved author, sadly dead, and writing books in their name? I can see it now - Books in the style of ...... Enid Blyton? Agatha Christie?
Friday, 7 December 2012
Women writers

So read and enjoy, and I'll catch up later. Right now I have to go and find something a writer would like for under £5, wrap it in Christmas paper (do I have any?) so it is presentable for the bran tub at my local writers' lunch today, and then think about whatever it is I'm going to take as my contribution to lunch. Even thinking about it is making me hungry, which is very bad as I am hoping to lose the few pounds I put on by drinking all that Australian wine a few weeks ago. Empty calories, I keep telling myself whenever a glass hovers into view, but Australian wine is so good I just could not, cannot resist. If I don't do something soon I amgoing to be heading to town for a new wardrobe as nothing will fit.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Writing

I don't take part, and so I notice how Blog posts drop off, comments are few, people disappear from Twitter and Facebook, critique groups don't move very much during the month. It demonstrates how much writers inhabit these places, or, put another way, how many people out there want to write a story even in these days when book publishing is supposedly in recession.
One answer to avoid the slow down would be to cultivate people who are not likely to launch themselves into NaNoWriMo, but how do you know? The most unexpected people turn out to have ambitions to write a book...some day. I attended a Girls' Night In at Hexham Library last night as a panel member, and was pleased to see so many people turn out on a freezing cold night, some travelling lonely country roads from villages in the Pennines where snow covered the ground. We told them how we'd begun to write, how we wrote, what we wrote etc etc. and they asked if our stories were ever altered by publishers, did we have any input on covers, how did it feel if stories or titles were altered? I suspect we had some budding authors right there in the audience.
For me it began years ago, back in the days of typewriters and Sno-pak, and it was tediously slow. I fiddled about in between real life and never finished anything, but then three things happened in the early nineties: computers came in at work, and I had to learn how to use them. I saw the possibilities and got a computer at home, and writing moved up a gear. Then I retired, and a whole new chapter of life began. First book finally completed, offered and accepted. I was hooked.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Endings are such a problem

My
poor characters have been waiting more than a year for this resolution, so I’d
better get on with it. But then, as Hemingway once said, ‘The first draft of
anything is shit.’
I can
study famous quotes and read about endings, climaxes, resolutions and the like,
but when it comes right down to it, I’m going to have to finish the thing, or
else admit I’ve wasted my time writing the first 80 thousand words. I don't want to give up; I like these characters. A piece of advice remembered from long ago - if you can't decide on the ending, write several endings and see which you prefer. I may very well try it. I'll let you know if it works.
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