Writing Update . . .

It's been a wee while since I last gave an update on my creative endeavours, so I thought today is as good as any to bore you all.

I won't lie. Writing my current piece, Blood for Blood, has been hard, much harder than any of the other books in the series (none of which are published). This dark fantasy follows Reagan, a female assassin, who discovers that her current target has a connection to the murder of her father when she was a child, and seizes the opportunity to investigate rather than kill him, regardless of the wrath that falls upon her from her employees.

Whilst devising this story many many moons ago, it was going to be just as above, a bog standard story about a girl hunting her father's murderers, but it's evolved sooo much since those days. Yes, this is the basic premise for the story, but there is a reason this is 'DARK fantasy', and as horror writing scarily comes naturally to me, the dark element soon found its way in. I didn't have a problem with this at all. I really liked the twist it gave the story. It also gave the back story depth and fit in well with the rest of the series.

But suddenly I felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew. I felt out of my depth and a simple story suddenly turned complicated. I think that's when I started to struggle with it. It wasn't my enthusiasm for the story. That was still there, thick and fast. I think more than anything it was my confidence, and I began to question whether I was good enough to carry something this complicated off.

When that wall hits your confidence, it hits hard.

I even got to the stage where I felt I needed a break from it, and started planning my next WIP. But I inevitably went back, persevered, and finished it about two months ago with a word count of 120k. Not bad, all things considered.

I've now started editing it. It needs a lot of work and you can tell the areas I struggled with, and even though I've convinced myself that yes, I am good enough to pull this off, I can't help but sit back, look at the entire thing and think "ugh...can I really do this?"

The answer is yes. I know I can. There's also a sequal that's banking on this story to be completed. So deep breath and here we go...

Religion in Fantasy . . .

I've just recently finished the first draft of my current piece, Blood for Blood. It's basically the 5th installment in my Dark Fantasy series, The Egaean Archives.

I've struggled with this piece, I won't lie. Hidden sub-plots kept springing up and I think I felt a little over-whelmed at times, like I had bitten off more than I could chew. (What didn't help is that I broke my own rule and wrote and self-published Tunnel half way through this one). But chew I did, and 120,500 words later, it was finished. Again, just the first draft I have to keep reminding myself. I am pleased with it but it's far from perfect.

One charater turned out to be not quite who I expected. He ends up being my main antagonist, and throughout the story, he has changed who he wants to be; an Advisor, a Priest, a Commander in the Royal Guard. He just hasn't been consistant, but as the piece drew to a close, he eventaully made up his mind. He's a Cardinal (still going along the priest line), which is great. The end climax is in a monestary and this now makes perfect sense.

BUT...

What is he a Cardinal of? Religion does feature in my world, but it's only been something I've touched on. In order to flesh out this character, I need to know who he is and what he does, and in order to do that, I need to flesh out my religious system. I already have one historical story set in place which features heavily in two of the other pieces, but it's not enough. So where do I even start? It's like world building from scratch.

I've decided to go along the similiar sort of lines of ancient Greece with many gods, each with their own role to play. I'll have the people aware of these gods, but the majority will only worship one main one. I just need to figure out who these gods are now. A fun way to spend Easter Weekend.

What about you guys? Have you ever had to create a whole new religious system for your piece? How did you go about doing that?

Trees? I See No Trees; That Forest Is In The Way...

Once upon a time there was a friendly little group of writers who got together once a week to share their writing experiences and to write little exercises in hopes that it would help them feel inspired and grow. They would also critique each others work, work that they hoped would one day make them millions, and gave each other the kind of support only other writers can give.

But making millions from your first novel is a tough job. It's difficult to even get one foot through the publishing door. So one member came up with the idea of putting Amazon's self publishing theory to the test.

Thus was created the wonderful cooperation known as Starfish Publishing. The works from within our group would be published under this cooperation and sold on Amazon Kindle. A website was designed and built and to date there are four titles listed as available - and a glorious banner was designed with our logo and the words Starfish Publishing. Being clever, we even replaced the 'A' in Starfish with an actual starfish. Things were looking good.

This website went live back in November. Only last week an 18 year old pointed out an error that none of us - an entire group of writers, I must add - ever saw.

There appeared to be no 'R' in Starfish. It would seem not only did the five legged picture replace the 'A' but also the 'R'.

I reiterate the fact that this error was missed and over-looked by an entire group of writers for about four months, but having laughed off our shocking embarrassment, we set about putting it right. Thus the tale of the Starfish Publishing website has a happy ending.


We all make errors like this. We're human. It even happens to professionals, and how many of you have picked up a book and noticed a spelling error within its sea of words?

Sometimes, no matter how hard we look for those trees, the forest just always gets in the way...