New Book: The Earl's Protection

 New Book:  Now available for pre-order

A marriage born of necessity becomes the one place Caroline discovers she is free.

Plunged into grief when her father and the man she was to marry both fall at Waterloo, Caroline Hewitt does not expect her only brother to dictate the rest of her life. 

The estate Andrew has inherited is on the brink of ruin, and he knows both he and his sister must marry well—and quickly. Caroline rebels against Andrew’s tightening control, but her defiance only provokes his temper. What she does not expect is for him to seize her future with cold determination. 

Driven into peril by his schemes, she finds unexpected rescue in a stranger—a man whose quiet strength unsettles her as much as it reassures. He offers her protection, but safety comes at the cost of a marriage neither of them planned. Their sudden union brings Caroline into a new world of unfamiliar kindness, wary servants, and a family still healing from its own wounds. As she learns to stand on her own feet, she also learns what it is to be cherished. 

But Andrew’s threats grow bolder, and Caroline must choose whether to retreat into fear or step forward into the life—and love—she is beginning to desire. To claim her future, she must confront the brother she once loved—and the courage she never believed she possessed. A tender, slow‑burn Regency romance about trust, belonging, and the quiet bravery required to claim one’s own happiness.

Lady Phee's Scandal

 Finally - it is finished!

The e-book is now for sale on Amazon. I shall be watching to see what happens for the internet is awash with rumours and people telling the world that the Amazon algorithm has changed recently which is the reason  so many authors are finding their sales dropping. 

At the same time more and more self-professed gurus are claiming they know the secret and will tell what it is - for a small fee, of course. I have not succumbed. 

I will wait and see what happens and believe me I shall be watching with interest! Just let me say I think Lady Phee is worth a read. (But then I would, wouldn't I? ) 

I am considering making it free for the first few days to see if that helps spread the word.

LADY PHEE’S SCANDAL A Regency Romance

Submitted 2 Dec 2025 $3.99 or £2.99

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G4RSYN6S

I'm working on it!

 Corrections done! I am always amazed at how little things get missed until the published book pops up on my ipad!

 "brough" instead of brought, a period where it should not be, little, insignificant things...

All caught and corrected now. Not that there were hordes, but perhaps half a dozen things to alter. So now I suppose I must concentrate on getting the word out that it is available. The downside of the job, if I'm honest.

Once that is done I can get on with other things. Dusting, perhaps. Wiping off dirty finger marks on doors and other exciting things. Not very enticing, so maybe I'll do a little editing on an older book. I enjoy that when I start because it tells me that I have learned something about writing over the years! I seem to remember that when I first wrote my book about Finlay, it was something like 160,000 words. Right now it is down to 105k, and I'm still editing. I was very wordy at the start of my writing journey. Look out for a new edition of Alba is Mine soon. 

Library Genesis

 https://www.theatlantic.com/.../search-libgen.../682094/...

Every author should check this link to search for their books.  The Atlantic  (an American Journal?) has a searchable database listing over 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers.

 The database is called Library Genesis or LibGen. Four of mine are there. So are many others, including those of Dorothy Dunnett. It is anyone's guess how much or how little of it has been used to "teach" Meta's AI systems to write books. 

You should read Jessica Redland's thoughts on the matter: https://www.jessicaredlandauthor.com

"The billionaires, the pirates , and the great book heist."

Podcasts

Call me slow if you like but I have just discovered the world of podcasts.

The only trouble with them is I tend to fall asleep - which is great if its late at night and sleeping is what I really should be doing, but not so good if it is midday and I am supposed to be working.

I hear them all day long as my other half listens to political/news podcasts,. I hear them but I don't listen. Well, sometimes I do when it's Rory and Alistair. But it gave me the idea that it would help save my eyesight if I listened to things instead of reading them all. So I began looking for podcasts in my area and found  loads of creative writers do them.

Many are American. We are usually a decade behind American trends, though maybe the delay is not so long now as it used to be thanks to social media and television. I've begun with Urban Fantasy author Lindsay Buroker since I enjoyed her Death Before Dragons series. She is a six figure author so she must be doing something the readers like. 

Will I do a podcast? I think the world is safe as haven't a clue how to do it technically. 

Switching genres

 There's such a lot to learn when switching genres. 

I am busy doing research and the police would think me a serial killer if they they looked at my research folders on my PC. Titles like Forensics, Poisons, decomposition rates, and fingerprints abound. 

I can think of plots but so far nothing has really grabbed my attention. So much has already been done so it is very hard to find a new angle on killing someone. I am discovering authors in the genre and so far I've found Caroline Graham, Peter James (of the Roy Grace series) and next I'm going to try Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike fame).

I already knew L J Ross, Mari Hannah and Robert Goddard, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, Tess Gerritsen, Jack Cartwright, J M Dalgleish and Ann Cleeves but what I am delighted to find is the wide range within the genre. Some are too gruesome for me and those I avoid. Some are a tad wordy, and some are quite brief - I am always surprised when I get to the end of a Joy Ellis!

The craft of writing

 

To paraphrase Emma Darwin, “conscious craft has become intuitive craft” in my own writing.

I noticed when I did my second draft of FRIDAY NIGHT MURDER how often I had filtered the scene through the eyes of my main protagonist. I also noticed how easily I was ripping out the filtering words, without actually thinking about it.

To me this was a sign that I am improving. I also noticed how often I changed -ing endings to -ed endings. I think I even went for direct thought instead of having my chosen character think aloud. Why was he so nervous? Instead of  Jess wondered why he was so nervous.

The third draft suffered more of the same. No doubt one or two examples will have escaped the editing scissors but hey! It is a good step forward, especially since I was doing it without being told to do it or because I’d read an article somewhere.

Hung up!

 I got into a muddle yesterday over which POV I was writing.

The more I thought about it, the more puzzled I got. So today I am giving myself a brief refresher -

First Person: story is told by "I"

Second Person: a narrator describes the readers' thoughts, words and actions  "You feel your heart race"

Third Person: the story is told from inside the character's head. "she remembered the day"

Third Person Multiple POV. The story is sometimes told from a secondary character's POV as well as the main character.

Omniscient Narrator: As if God tells the story, seeing into every character's deepest motives and thoughts.

Author Intrusion when the author slips personal comments into the scene. Definitely a No-No!

Mixed Viewpoint when first and third POV are both used. Useful in time slip and romance novels.

In all cases, limit information to what the POV character can know. Avoid head-hopping. Give clear signals when changing POV with a physical break or scene break. Name the POV character in the first sentence after the change.

This year so far has been very wet and the result is rampant growth of trees and shrubs. Paths are overgrown and lost, so I thought today's pic was rather appropriate.

It shows in everything they do!

 Dialogue is important. to a writer and also to a reader.

Each character in the story should have their own voice. The reader should be able to recognise a teenage girl's dialogue from a business man's without being told which is which.

Working in some speech patterns helps readers grow familiar with particular characters.

Sometimes what is said is at odds with body language and this can be a Good Thing. We can signal disapproval with our faces, bodies and eye contact or lack of it. It doesn't have to be verbal to get the point across.

Showing signs of a character's emotions is more powerful than simply telling.

Men and Women are different, and it shows in everything they do and say - or don't say!

Conflict can be simple

 Ever wondered about conflict in creative writing?

It's important. Without it, a book is boring.

There is conflict in action and everybody can see when two characters come to blows or the Indians attack the cowboys. There can also be conflict that is only implied or suggested, even hidden.

People rarely agree about everything, no matter how good a friendship is. Little things niggle and become an irritant, and can lead to big blow-ups which may seem to be about one thing but are often due to something completely unsuspected. Those conflicts make life really interesting! So often these spats show what people really are and what makes them tick - or explode.

My dog and I have conflict. She wants to dart from side to side at great speed, following every last smell but I want her to walk sedately by my side and not drag me into a hedge or a cowpat.  We struggle. Eventually I win, and she loses interest in the smells. (Not really, but she stops dragging me to them!) Sometimes I can be patience itself with this behaviour but sometimes I am dangerously close to shrieking at her and since she's deaf, it doesn't help. 

The shrieking can be because several small incidents have happened to me that particular day, and it is the cumulative effect that tips me too far over the edge. This can happen in fiction, too.  It doesn't have to be one word, or one phrase, but it might be several comments from different characters spread over a day. Conflicts can be simple or they can be complex. Writing conflict is wonderful.

What is pacing?

 

What you may well ask, is pacing?

It can refer to the rhythm of the novel, the rate the reader reads, the speed at which events take place in the story. Usually, it refers to the latter.

What speeds up the pace? Dialogue. Every good book begins with the protagonist wanting something.

S/he might not know what it is s/he wants on page one, but s/he had better have found out by page 30, and 20 would be even better. Everything that follows should lead to the achievement of that goal. Other characters have their own particular goals, which often prove to be obstacles to the protagonist.

If there are two conflicting goals for the same character, then the battle is within that character. Each goals is a plot arc. The main arc should open at the beginning of the story and close at the climax. Smaller arcs can open and close along the way and stay relevant to the particular character by showing their motivation, agency and desire.

Pacing, therefore, refers to the length of time between moments of conflict.

Never use a verb

 

“Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.”

I saw Elmore Leonard’s piece about creative writing and liked the sentence so much I read the rest. (I have read it before and agree with most of it.) Other authors say similar things, and sometimes they way they say it is entertaining.

It took me a while to know when I needed to use the verb “said” at all. So many times, particularly if only two characters are in the scene, the tag is not needed. I think I’ve got it now.

Sometimes I long to go back and re-edit all my earlier titles, but will have to stay as a record of my learning process. Ten times 70k words is 7ook and to read through that lot with a correcting pen would take maybe longer than I still have on earth!

It can be easy or it can be hell

 

My characters are talking to each other. They are a team, so they have to.

Dialogue can be easy or it can be hell.

And how to make them all sound different – more like themselves and not like the other guy. It ain’t easy. The ideal is that you should be able to tell who said what without the dreaded he saids and she saids. Nice work if you can manage it, as someone once said.

I usually get the words down and then add necessary tags so that we don’t get totally lost about who said what to whom. Then I look to make it more interesting and that means adding some action. What are they doing while they have this dialogue? How are they feeling? Is that coming across in what they say, or have I got to resort to telling readers how my characters feel? Maybe I can get away with saying she is angry if I say “her anger rose until it boiled over in a splurge of boiling hot words.” (A bit wordy but you get the idea.)

I like to add northern dialect to some of my characters, but its easy to go overboard with it. I know what they’re saying, and I hear it around me most days but dialect may not carry to the far corners of the world. Sometimes I toss in a glossary at the end and leave it at that.

It’s a balancing act I find entertaining.  Once I’ve done my best shot, I leave it and go back a day or two later when I do a read through. I have to do this. This time I’m glad I did because I’ve found characters talking about something that hasn’t happened in their world. I know it’s going to, but they shouldn’t know about it yet. So easy to get confused with time lines. They almost deserve a post to themselves.

Making an Impact.

I am currently proof-reading The Cragstone Affair.

I first published this in 2015 as the Craigsmuir Affair and decided to unpublish and re-publish in e-book format with a new cover because the spelling of the original title always seemed to puzzle Amazon. (I haven't decided if print format is worth all the effort) As I've gone through the stages, I've removed a thousand or so words and improved the prose - as you do. Is editing ever really finished? This led me to consider the opening lines and wonder if they were good enough. Have I improved on my first lines, or not, in the last five years?

The truth is, I'm not sure. I knew what the story question was before I began - could a young Victorian woman achieve her dream of going to art school AND get happily married? I solved that one positively by the end of the story and gave her a mystery  to solve and a few adventures along the way.

I read somewhere that a mystery does not need a murder in the first few lines. A romance does not have to have to begin with a kiss, but the killer thing to remember is that most mysteries have a dead body at the end of the first chapter. (Believe me or not, that pun was unintentional.)

I had my mystery planted before the first chapter ended, so that was OK. But  when I begin a new story I now spend a long time thinking what the first line might be. Looking at the line I wrote way back eight or nine years ago, I don't think I did. If anything, I thought of the bigger picture, the fact that in paragraph two she falls down the stairs and lands in the arms of a stranger. I liked that, and still do. It is a visual beginning and readers might not like it, but it pleased me and I guess I'm stuck with it now.

Too much dialogue?

 Ask yourself -

Do I rely overmuch on dialogue? 

There’s a trick to handling dialogue. A story needs a narrative voice to anchor us in the story, to tell us who these characters are and how they relate to each other. Without that, we lack understanding of

a) what is going on (no context)

b) where they are (no description)

c) why they are having this discussion.(motivation)

It’s good to have a description of the surroundings which may or may not be important to the conversation. Since we cannot hear the voices, we miss out on clues such as dialect, tone, emotion.

The very first literary agent I ever applied to said bluntly, “You’ve forgotten the who, why, what, where and how.” (I think those are the words she used. It was at least fifteen years ago! But if I misremembered, I’m sure you get what she meant.)

If a reader has to go back and read every word three times over to get the sense of what is unfolding, they will give up from sheer exhaustion. So remember - just dialogue may look cute, but it will not do the entire
job.

 

Saggy Middle, anyone?

 

I think I’ve reached that place that writers call a saggy middle. I understand it is a perennial problem. My characters have done so well, and fought all obstacles, but now – where do they go from here?

Stakes (in story telling at least) are those things that keep a reader reading. Without them, then the story sags and loses momentum.

A story starts with a challenge to a characters' ideas and plans. They are forced into new directions. But the character needs ever new challenges. Words like Then - but - therefore - but - then - but - therefore - but..."come to mind.

If you have more than one strand or thread, then they need to interweave in an interesting way. Each time you switch from one strand to another, the reader loses emotional involvement in one thread, and needs to pick up rather quickly on another. This can slow reading to a crawl. What? Who is this? What happened to the other person? Find a place where a breather is sort of welcome but also promises Things are going to get Hairy when you turn the Page.

The big turning point needs to have things change for ever. In Pride and Prejudice Mr Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth is such a turning point: she is offered a splendid marriage which will help both her and her sisters and she turns it down. Why?

Elizabeth finds herself at the crux or the midpoint, where the theme, present in the story right from the beginning, is tested. She made her decision and may well rue it. The very end of the story is where it is finally resolved.

To filter or not to filter?

 Have you heard of something called “filtering?”

I discovered a description of it this morning and laughed quietly to myself, for I have been trying to break the habit in my own writing for about a year now.

John Gardner describes “filtering” this way:

... the needless filtering of the image through some observing consciousness. The amateur writes: "Turning, she noticed two snakes fighting in among the rocks." Compare: "She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting ..." Generally speaking - though no laws are absolute in fiction - vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as "she noticed" and "she saw" be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing see.

Janet Burroway explains: As a fiction-writer you will often be working through "some observing consciousness." Yet, when you step back and ask the readers to observe the observer - to look at rather than through the character - you start to tell-not-show, and rip us briefly out of the scene.

These days we are advised to Show, not Tell. So how we clear out the filters becomes important.  Having finally noticed this in re-editing my own books I am, to paraphrase Emma Darwin, at the point where “conscious craft has become intuitive craft.” 

The more straightforward, physical filter-words like "saw", "noticed", "looked round" "watched" "observed" are the first ones to look for, and then you can chase down phrases like "I remembered that", "she wondered if", "they decided that", "we considered whether" "he thought about", "He thought back to when", "to her it seemed as if" and if you think of more, follow them, too. You may be able to take out a great many of them and thus improve your writing. I know it improves mine!

People talk of Gothic novels - aka Northanger Abbey – but what is a gothic setting? Dracula’s castle is gothic because it helps invoke gothic themes. Take architecture, add in claustrophobia and creeping dread, toss in distance from civilisation, a prison-like atmosphere and you are almost there. 

Old places, and isolated wilderness helps to set the scene.  Almost any castle will do, especially if it is partially ruined and has a dungeon or better yet – a locked door. How about an ancient mansion, a hunting lodge, or dilapidated chateau? There are plenty of ruined cottages scattered about the norther landscape.

Take something familiar and twist it. A doll isn’t gothic-scary, but a doll that inexplicably appears on your bedside table might be. How did it get there? Who put it there?

Signing the contacts on some property isn’t scary, but doing so in Transylvania might be, especially if a mysterious and reclusive count lived there.

Historical fiction is based in reality. In Gothic horror, magic and monsters and things that go bump in the night might be real.

In a Gothic horror, the doll would be the ghost of a horribly murdered girl that now possesses the doll.

In historical fiction ghosts aren’t real and there will usually be a protagonist driven mad by the nasty doll shunted around by her wicked uncle.

 I like writing about the Viking Age which tends to be action-packed and practical. But I am beginning to think along the lines of a chieftain’s hall in the middle of nowhere, with a murderer who stalks the corridors at night, leaving gruesome trophies behind!

Yes, I did read Beowulf at uni!

But add in dread, and snow them in over a brutal winter as they are picked off one by one…

Flicking through other blogs

Mullion Headland

Every now and then I flick through the blogs of other writers and pick up some hints and tips to help me on my way. Today I learned that writing the opening line before you’ve finished the book is a waste of time.

I read on and found a first chapter should:

1. Introduce the Main Character.

2. Make us Want to Spend Time with that Character

3. Create an atmosphere from page 1

4. Hint at the Theme

5. Tell Us Where We Are. Home for geriatrics or Chatham House in 1832.

6. We need some conflict on page 1 but the major inciting incident can wait a little

7. What does Your Protagonist Want; one major goal (the main story arc) and a goal for each chapter. Great if you get both in chapter 1.

8. We need Major Characters with dialogue

As Anne R. Allen suggests at the end of her post, the urge to check my first chapter against this list is strong. My Regency heroine is escaping a mean guardian, runs into trouble and is rescued by a handsome young man all in chapter one. But do I have a theme? What does my heroine want, apart from escaping? I think she’s likeable (but I would, wouldn’t I?) but will readers find her entertaining?

All I can do is carry on to the end and then – only then – redesign the first chapter if I feel the need.

To trope or not to trope

 I learned a few things yesterday.

 The word Trope began to collide with me at every corner.

As an English Lit student, I equated it with Theme.

The dictionary takes it further - "a metaphorical or ironic use of a word." I hunted further still and discovered that a trope establishes a predictable character, setting or scenario in fiction, such as :

Orphan, best friend, kidnapped, road trip, secret identity, secret baby, politics, protector, violence, lost heir – all tropes. 

There are many more. You might think, like me, that they are nothing more than stereotypes and clichés, so I read on and found I was wrong. It seems the way the trope is used makes it far more than a cliché or stereotype.

I got onto this by listening to one of the many videos teaching people how to sell more books. I knew about sub-genres like the Ingenue, the Secret Baby, the Arranged Marriage from using the Amazon website.  I also recall trying to please Harlequin a decade ago  (I never did please them!) - they used the terms such as the Billionaire Oil Sheik and Marriage of Convenience back then. 

Perhaps they invented the tropes! It is food for thought, and as I hesitate on beginning a new book, I am at a very good place to put the ideas into practice.