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The Magic Number Nine

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The Magic Number Nine

Last week, I promised I would show you part of ‘Keepers of the Past’ which I cut from the book. (More details of how the book is going are at the end of this post.) The cut section is below in its raw form, before I made any corrections or edits. The book, of course, will be laid out properly. I can’t get WordPress to do indents and things, so, sorry about the layout.

Keepers of the Past: Extract

The scene. Joe is intrigued by the mysterious standing stones and stone circles he has been visiting on Bodmin Moor. Many of them have nine stones, and he has uncovered more coincidences involving the numbers nine and eighteen. These have led him to believe that a friend’s cousin is in trouble. Joe is deaf, so Dalston is interpreting for him. Frank is at the academy because he has an unusual talent for mathematics (and tailoring, but otherwise, he’s uneducated and he swears a lot, be warned).

Joe, Dalston and Frank are in the study where there is a chalkboard. Joe has asked him to explain why nine is considered a magic number.

‘Look here,’ Frank said, taking the chalk from Joe and shoeing him away. ‘This is what I can tell you about the sodding number nine, right? Sit down, pay attention and you’ll be fucking amazed.’
Joe did as instructed, sitting forward in the armchair, his chin on his fists, and his eyes flitting between Dalston’s fingers and Frank writing on the board.
‘The number nine is special,’ Frank began. ‘Dalston, what’s two nines?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘Right. What’s three?’
Dalston started counting on his fingers.
‘Nah, you don’t have to do that,’ Frank interrupted and held up his hands. ‘Look, Joe. You want to know what three nines make?’
‘Twenty seven.’
‘Yeah, alright, so you’re a bloody genius. Look.’ Frank bent the middle finger of his left hand. ‘Take down number three, and you’re left with what? Two on one side and seven on the other. Twenty seven.’ Doing the same with the next finger, he said, ‘Take down number four, you’re left with three and six, and that ain’t the price of me fucking hat. It’s what four nines make. Do it with your little finger, Dalston.’
Dalston did, and realised he was left with four fingers on one hand and five on the other.
‘Right, forty five. So it goes on up to ten.’ Frank bent the thumb of his right hand, leaving nine fingers in a row. ‘Ninety.’
‘So, you’ve got a trick to remember your nine times table,’ Dalston said with a smirk. ‘Not exactly genius material, mate. What’s your point?’
‘Want to see another bit of magic, Joe?’
Joe was enthralled, bending his fingers and marvelling at the results.
‘Joe?’ Frank waved in his sightline. ‘Watch this.’
Back at the board, he wrote a list of numbers.

9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90.

‘That’s your nine times table up to ninety, right? Notice anything about it?’ When neither Joe nor Dalston could answer, he added a zero before the first nine. ‘Now? No? Bloody hell…’ Frank sighed and drew a vertical line. ‘If I stuck a mirror between the two fives… between forty-five and fifty-four right there, you’d get the same sequence of numbers going forwards as you would going back. The last five numbers are a mirror bleeding image of the first. Get it?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘It only happens with nine,’ Frank said. ‘That’s why they call nine a magic number. Do it with your three or your seven, five, whatever, you won’t get the same mirror image. And there’s something else. Give us a number with nine in it, Joe. Any one with two digits, that’s two…’
‘I-o,’ Joe interrupted, and signed nine and six.
Frank wrote them on the board, 96, said, ‘Here’s another bit of magic for you,’ and beside it, wrote 69. ‘Take any two-digit number involving nine, reverse it, and take one away from the other… Ninety six minus sixty nine, we get seventy two. Seven plus two makes nine.’
‘Yeah?’ Dalston said, thinking that was just another coincidence. ‘What about forty-nine take away ninety-four? You can’t do that.’
”Course you can.’Frank wrote on the board.

49 minus 94 = -45
4 + 5 = 9

‘Just have to go to the left of zero and into minus. It works there too, see? Anyhow, me point is, Joe, the number nine is a weird one. Oh, hang on, there’s something else.’
More scratching on the board, the shrill squeal of chalk, and a few swearwords later, Frank had produced another list.
‘Joe. We got nine, and we got eighteen.’ He pointed to the numbers as he spoke. ‘One and eight is nine like you say. Then, we got twenty-seven. Two and seven make?’
‘Nine.’
‘Correct. Three and six? Nine. Four and Five? Nine, and so on.’
‘I never thought of that,’ Dalston said, doubt now turning to intrigue.
‘That’s ‘cos you ain’t the fucking mathematical genius, ain’t it,’ Frank tutted. ‘Give us a number. Any number.’
Dalston faltered, scrambling for something that wasn’t written on the board. ‘Seventy six.’
Frank wrote it, and turned to Joe.
‘How old are you, Joe?’
‘Nineteen.’
Frank wrote that on the board, and asked Dalston for another number; a higher one.
‘One hundred and sixty-two,’ came out of his mouth for no reason.
‘And I’m going to write this, ‘cos it’s the year.’
There were now four numbers on the board. 76, 19, 162 and 1890.
Frank stood to the side, reminding Dalston of a schoolteacher, except the ones he’d known were older than twenty and didn’t swear so much.
‘Dalston,’ Frank said, making him sit up straight and expect a telling off. ‘What’s nine times seventy-six?’
‘How the fuck would I know?’
‘Bloody hell,’ Frank muttered, and chalked up the answer. ‘Seventy-six times nine is six hundred and eighty-four.’ He’d worked it out in a heartbeat, and Dalston could only assume he was correct. ‘And the others…’
A few seconds passed, and the chalkboard was now a confusing mess of numbers that blurred Dalston’s vision.

76 x 9 = 684
19 x 9 = 171
162 x 9 = 1,458
1890 x 9 = 17,010

‘Do you see where I’m leading you with this?’
Dalston interpreted the question to Joe, and they stared at each other for a second before Joe made the sign for lunatic.
Laughing, Dalston said, ‘No, Frank, we ain’t got a clue. What are you trying to say?’
‘Ain’t it obvious?’
‘No.’
‘Right! Look here, seventy-six times nine makes six hundred and eighty-four, right?’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Good, ‘cos I ain’t fucking lying. Add up six, eight and four and what do you get?’
Joe gasped and signed, ‘Eighteen.’
‘Correct. Add one and eight?’
‘Nine.’
‘And we’re back to the sodding start. Who wants to go next on this merry-go-round? Dalston, what’s one plus seven plus one?’
‘Nine.’
‘And if you add up the others, you’ll get to some division of nine. Always.’
‘Always?’
‘Yup.’
‘That’s incredible.’
‘No, it ain’t. It’s just how it works, and that, Joe, is another reason some people reckon the number nine is fucking magic. Gets me every time, I have to say. No matter what you multiply by nine, you can always add the individual numbers of the answer and keep going until you got one digit, and it’ll always be nine. One last random one to prove me point, then I’m getting another drink.’
A little more scratching on the board, and Frank finished his lecture with a large random number.

14,892 x 9 = 134,028
1 + 3 + 4 + 0 + 2 + 8 = 18
1 + 8 = 9

He signed his work, Frank Andino, and poured himself a healthy glass of brandy, saying, ‘If you want to know about all your number nine, Joe, then all I can tell you is that it’s a fucking weird one. No wonder they was writing it everywhere, putting up rocks and stuff, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with a bloke getting killed, nor young David’s cousin, neither.’

I cut most of this as I worked on later drafts. Why? Simply because there is too much explanation, and it is not all relevant to the plot. I realised that I’d put such a lengthy explanation in there because a) I thought it was fascinating, and b) in writing the scene, what I was doing was explaining it to myself. In the redraft, the interesting information is still there, but I summed it up in a couple of paragraphs. Although I have kept one or two of the examples, showing digits rather than words, there are fewer of them. This, I hope, will get the point across without confusing the reader, as the above first draft does.

Keepers of the Past: Update

As I write, I am doing my final read-through having completed the various drafts and used ProWritingAid to conduct a line edit. The final draft goes to my proofreader next week, and once it is back, I will have one last read before uploading it all to Amazon. I have the front cover and will reveal it soon. My designer is working on the full cover for the paperback, and I have two illustrations ready to use at the front of the book. Everything is in place, and, with luck, we’re looking at a release date towards the end of the first week of November. I’ll let you know.

Well, that’s it from me for this week. The summer season is winding down here on our Greek island, and we have swapped the fans for the heaters, and the summer wardrobe for the winter one, but the days are still warm, and the sun continues to shine. Have a good week, and I will be back next Saturday. Meanwhile, keep in touch through my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jacksonmarshauthor

JM

Editing: Keepers of the Past

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Editing: Keepers of the Past

I am now into my final edit of the second Larkspur mystery, ‘Keepers of the Past’, so I thought it would chat about my editing process.

First Draft

I work by the maxim, Don’t get it right, get it written (then get it right). When I embark on a first draft, I start at the beginning of the story and work through to the end. On some days, I know I’m not doing my best, but I write anyway, and on others, I fly through, marvelling at how wonderfully the story is telling itself. Later, when I reread the draft, I often discover that the slower days produced the better work, and when I thought I was doing well, I wasn’t. Still, the first draft is there, the story is told no matter how badly, and I have something to work with.

Second Draft

In his book, On Writing, Stephen King says that an author should seek to cut something like 10% of the first draft when working on the second. I seek to do this but don’t always find, and I don’t take it as a rule that must be obeyed. Sometimes, I find I end up with 10% more in a second draft, and that’s fine, as long as it’s a necessary and well-written 10%.

For me, the second draft is often a read-through of the first with an eye to consistency of story. Have I said something early on that doesn’t tie up later? Does a character’s eye colour accidentally change? Particularly important to me is the timeline, and because I use dates as chapter headings, I need to ensure these remain accurate. (They are accurate to the calendar from the year in which the story is set, and I check this with publications in the online newspaper archive because not all online date calculators are accurate.) Another thing to look out for is repetition. I often put some piece of vital information early in the story, and then repeat it later, which is unnecessary. What I’m doing is reminding myself to make sure the info is in there, because after putting it in chapter one, by the time I get to chapter ten, I can’t remember if I’ve written in it the story. Therefore, draft two is often about removing repetition. A reader should only need to read something once, and if I find myself saying aloud, ‘Yes, I know this,’ I delete it.

Third (or Fourth) Draft

Here’s where things get technical. I finally know the story and characters well enough, and have the plot, timeline, developments etc. in order, so they can now take care of themselves. What needs attention next is the grammar, and I do what people call a line edit. This is where you go through every single line of the text looking for mistakes. I’m not just talking about typos, I am always on the look out for them, but grammar, sentence construction and use of words. The question in my head at this stage is, Can I write this better? Which I would change to How can this be improved, if I was editing this blog post. (I would also add a question mark to the improvement. I put it that way to highlight how you should be aware of missing punctuation as much as everything else.)

I am currently on draft three of ‘Keepers of the Past’, and at the line edit stage. As an assistant, I use a plug-in to Word called ProWritingAid (PWA). I used to use Grammarly, but it messed with Word so much, I threw it out. PWA offers the writer plenty of suggestions on all kinds of things, and it can bog you down with so many, you end up over-editing. So, use it with care. I check through its reports for basic grammar, overused words, sentence length, clichés, and one they call ‘style’, because, among other things, it picks up on adverb use.

Another habit of mine when first drafting is to bung in an adverb when I can’t be bothered to explain something in a more literary way, and then forget to go back and change it. ‘I never use them in dialogue tags,’ he said sheepishly, because he has done, but only when unavoidable. When PWA tells me there are 17 adverbs in this chapter, and I gasp, I go through and eliminate as many as possible. Often, they are not needed. Here’s an example:

Someone had spent hours twisting and tightening, or it might have been done by a machine, but their labours had ultimately been in vain.

Ultimately been in vain? Why not just, been in vain? We know it happened in the past. I do, though, leave adverbs in speech, because that’s how people talk. Stephen King’s view on adverbs is they are lazy writing. It’s a case of show, not tell. ‘I am not!’ he said, angrily. That might be what you mean, and it’s a quick way of saying it, but, ‘I am not,’ he fumed, thumping the table with such force the crockery jumped’, lets the reader imagine so much more.

It also reminds me to mention exclamation marks! I hate them! I hate them more when they are overused!! I once read an autobiography by a film director known for making epic fantasy films. A brilliant screenwriter and director, but he didn’t employ a great editor. Every other line ended in an exclamation mark. I couldn’t believe it! We had the Money! Yes, okay, so you were excited, and one might forgive the dreaded ! after such an exclamation, but when the story continues with, So, we were off to the studio. There, we attended the auditions! Calm your enthusiasm, mate, that’s just unnecessary, as exclamation marks, in my opinion, often are.

Where was I? Oh, yes…

Overused Words

I have my next chapter open for editing and have run my PWA report, asking it to identify overused words. I always get a shock at this point, and here’s why. This is, verbatim, what the report says:

Overused Words Check
was/were. You have overused this word compared to published writing. Consider removing about 7 occurrences from 122.

One hundred and twenty-two uses of was/were!? The chapter only has 3,882 words in it – and never use exclamation and question marks together, btw. Nor abbreviations such as btw, unless you can justify doing so.
Overuse of was/were and had suggests not only lazy writing, but passive verb use and too much back-flashing. The report also highlighted 80 occurrences of had, and here’s more of the example text, pre-edit. (I have highlighted the overuse.)
Joe, my deaf character, is trying to make sense of some ancient symbols, one of which is a rope. While doing so, he reminisces about his time in the workhouse oakum shed, where his job was to unpick lengths of old rope.

As he worked, Joe often wondered who had put the ropes together. Someone had spent hours twisting and tightening, or it might have been done by a machine, but their labours had ultimately been in vain, and he wondered how they felt about that. The rope had done its job, it had held sails, secured vast ships to dockyard bollards, or perhaps tied down tea chests as the ship braved the distant oceans. He wondered what the rope had seen, what it would know, and tried to imagine life aboard a ship…

I’ve not edited this chapter yet, but when I do, I might rewrite the section thus:

As he worked, Joe often wondered who first put the ropes together. Someone spent hours twisting and tightening the threads, but in the end, their labours came to nothing, and he wondered how they would feel if they knew. The rope played its part, fastened sails, secured vast ships to dockyards, or kept cargo safe as the ship braved the wild oceans. He wondered where the rope had sailed and tried to imagine life aboard a ship…

Slightly better, and it might read as odd, because, here, it is out of context. It was an example of how easy it is to overuse certain words. Others to watch for include could, feel, know and see in their various forms (felt, knew, knowing, saw, seen, etc.)

The point of this section was to point out how finickity it can be to improve a manuscript, but how much better the finished work will be because of it. The danger, however, is over-editing. Being too nit-picky, you can ruin a sentence, paragraph or entire chapter by fiddling with it too much. It’s possible to lose the sense of the writing, the feel and the style, so you must watch out for that. Using PWA along with my own decisions, it can take me two hours to get through 4,000 words. ‘Keepers of the Past’ ran to 105,000 words in the first draft, so that means the line edit will take me about 26 hours. (Perhaps I should take it up as a profession and offer my services?)

While all that is going on in my office, my husband is in the sitting room reading through the first draft. His job, which he does willingly and for free, is to make sure the story makes sense, to point out any obvious repetition, and anything he thinks is unnecessary. Only yesterday he came to me to say most of one chapter was not needed, and unlike the rest of the book, he didn’t enjoy it. I suspected that would happen, because when I wrote it, I thought, ‘I like this part, but is it necessary?’ He gave me the answer I knew I should have found for myself, and the lesson there is, when editing, always trust your instincts.

Or, as our family doctor used to say, ‘If in doubt, whip it out.’ If you have read the Clearwater series, you won’t be surprised to know our family doctor was called Dr Markland.

After Editing?

After I have done my content, structure and line editing, I send the MS to be proofread by a professional proofreader. I am lucky enough to have discovered the editor and proofreader Ann Attwood, and highly recommend her services for being reliable, honest and knowledgeable.

Once back from proofing, the MS goes through another read to check the proofs, of course, but also, by then, I’ve had some distance from it, so I can take a fresh look. From then on, the novel is on its own and out there in the big wide world, and I can cut along to the next one and start the process all over again.

Next Week’s Blog

I intended to give you the first draft of the unnecessary chapter, pre-editing, so you can see what the fuss was all about. Part of ‘Keepers of the Past’ has to do with the mystical number nine, and the cut chapter delves into numerology and the strange way in which the number nine works. I found it so fascinating, I wrote a whole chapter about it, where foul-mouthed Frank takes us through its mystery. Totally not needed (apart from containing a plot point which I can easily move), it’s now in the cuts folder, but I will share it with you next week.

Until then, keep reading, and I’ll keep writing.

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Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: Character Intros and Outros.

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Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: Character Intros and Outros.

‘It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.’ Lyrics from a song by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields for their musical, ‘Seesaw’ are the inspiration for my blog post today. It’s all about openings and closings and in particular, how you introduce a character and how you say goodbye to them. Or, put another way, how the reader first meets them and the reader’s last sight of them before closing the book.

Why is this important? Because first impressions count, and a parting impression lasts. How to write screenplays books talk about the importance of a viewer’s first sight of a character, how, for example, you may see his/her back view first, and then he/she will slowly turn to the camera and give a sultry look, or how your first sight of the macho hero might be him jumping from a helicopter while firing a gun, blah, blah. It makes an impression, and the same works in a novel, only with more subtlety.

What can a Character Intro Say?

A great deal. Considering how you introduce a character is important because it’s an opportunity to show many things in a memorable moment. You can tell/show a reader so much about your character from a few lines, and here’s an example taken from the first two chapters of ‘Deviant Desire.’

Silas Hawkins was searching for coins in an East End gutter when a man four miles distant and ten years older sealed his fate.

Those are the opening lines of the series (without the prequel). They not only tell us Silas was destitute, but that he was in the East End and willing to search gutters for money. We also, hopefully, want to know why, who the other man is, and how is Silas’ fate being sealed.

Turn to chapter two and we meet Archer (Lord Clearwater), for the first time in an entirely different way.

Logs crackled in the iron grate, sending sparks heavenwards and waves of warmth across a sea of Turkish rugs. The fire-glow washed up on the slippered feet of the newly elevated Viscount Clearwater. Archer Riddington, a man in his late twenties, was seemingly drowning in the depths of a sumptuous wingback chair. His hands were draped over the worn armrest where his fingers undulated like kelp in a current as he pondered what to say next.

Warmth, Turkish rugs, comfort, riches… A contrast to the first chapter, Archer’s intro sets up the world of above stairs and below, rich and poor, that is the background to the time of the novel, and the 1800s. It also gives us his two names, but that’s another matter.

And as for Andrej, aka Fecker, I think he has one of my favourite intros.

Silas had deliberated at this window so often that some good had come of his indecision. That good appeared beside him, bringing the smell of apples and the reflection of a tall man of similar age.
‘Privet, Banyak,’ he said in his native tongue.
‘Evening, Fecks.’ Silas acknowledged his mate’s reflection with a nod towards a marble angel.

I like it because the image I have after reading it is of Fecker as a statue with angel wings because his reflection is superimposed over the statue inside the undertaker’s shop. Fecks turns out to be strong, gentle, kind and handsome, and I wanted him to appear in a slightly mysterious way.

Intros don’t apply only to main characters. Even when minor characters appear in your story, you should still consider how they make a first impression. This doesn’t mean writing a backstory or physical description in great detail, or even giving them a name (although names help readers establish an image of a character). It’s more to do with how you place them. Example: in ‘Deviant Desire’, when we meet Molly, the woman who runs the rope house where Silas and Andrej stay, she’s sitting at a desk, smells of piss and gin, and although she’s drunk, she guards her little empire like a hound. A short meeting such as that can tell the reader enough for the character to feel real, even though Molly’s not on stage for much of the time.

Saying Goodbye in an Outro.

The word outro usually applies to music, but I use it to describe that last time we see a character, major or minor. Even if the character is coming back in the next book of a series, the way he/she leaves the reader of the current story is important.

In my mystery thriller, ‘The Saddling’ (written as James Collins), I conclude the story with Tom, Barry and Dan, because they are the mainstays of the series. Tom’s the MC, Dan the ‘impact character’, and Barry the sidekick who, later, becomes so much more. They are last seen through the eyes of Dan’s mother…

Whiteback flocks moved lazily out of their path as the boys strolled over the tufted fields. They talked freely and made plans along the reeded deek, startling yellow finches into flight. They crossed the bridge where the mother trees watched over them, new leaves reflecting in the glass-flat water. A hernshaw raised its broad wings, both greeting and applauding as a murder of crows fled before them in panicked protest. They pushed each other, laughing, debated the future, and forgot the past. With arms around each other’s shoulders, they finally talked themselves into silence.
They walked on into the distance until they were nothing more than brushstrokes on nature’s vast canvas, and the sheep returned to graze.

Three outros in one, and, I hope, vanishing into a pastoral scene of tranquillity after a frenetic action climax.

In ‘The Judas Inheritance’, a horror/thriller I wrote that was made into a film, our last sight of the main character sees him falling into the pit of hell. In ‘Lonely House’, another horror/thriller of mine, the two MCs are last scene together in a stance that suggests something more is about to happen between them, and in my gay/straight body-swap comedy, ‘Remotely’, the two MCs leave the stage together, and one of them puts out the lights.

Those examples (all by James Collins) might sound like ‘how to finish your story’ rather than how to say goodbye to your characters, but often, they are the same thing. Often, but not always. At the end of ‘Deviant Desire’, we close on the good guys at Clearwater House but then follow the bad guy through the streets as he plots his revenge, and we know we haven’t seen the last of him.

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

The point of today’s writing thought was to think about how characters first appear and last appear, and it’s one of those tricks of the trade that comes to you with practice and experience. Having said that, I’m sure most intuitive writers are subconsciously aware of how they introduce their players, but a reminder is always useful. In the heavily structured world of screenplay writing, writers often have a sheet per character which lists the usual things such as name, profession, character traits and so on, but which also has a couple of boxes to be filled, titled ‘Most likely to say’, ‘Intro’ and ‘Outro.’ I used this technique in a couple of screenplays, and I have similar notes written in whatever notebook I am using for my current project.

Setting your characters in a place that helps define the character is useful. Having them speak in a certain way is too, but so is knowing the kind of thing they’re likely to say and, even better, having them open with such a line really defines them for the first-time reader or viewer. Again, I must quote from my own work, and in this case the Clearwater prequel, ‘Banyak & Fecks’ where we again meet Silas for the first time (it depends if you read this book before ‘Deviant Desire’).

A stick of rags waited, slouched against the end of the pew where penitents were expected to sit respectfully, his arms folded as he gaped at the vaulted ceiling. On hearing the swish of the curtain rings, the lad looked down, and on seeing the priest, shook his head to rid it of an uncontrollable yawn. Unsuccessful, he could only pull a twisted smile and wave a hand as an instruction for the priest to wait, before moaning out the last of the yawn and lodging a complaint against it by saying, ‘Fecking hell.’

That’s enough ramble from me. In other news…

I am working on draft two of the next Larkspur Mystery, ‘Keepers of the Past.’ I’ve not heard back from my cover designer yet, but I hope to have some rough drafts during this week. I need to write the blurb, contact Ann about a date for proofing and, of course, make the book as good as I can. On that note, I shall make my outro and bid you a healthy week to come.

JM

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The Larkspur Mysteries Book Two

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The Larkspur Mysteries Book Two

I have to admit, this Larkspur Mysteries Two is taking me some time to draft. There are a few reasons for this.

Standing Stones

The book is taking a fair amount of research. It’s one of those stories that I want to make as accurate as possible, yet be able to bend the facts to suit. It’s set in an actual place, Bodmin Moor in England, and includes references to real places, in this case, standing stone circles and other ancient monuments. However, they’re not all in the places I want them to be, so I have ‘fiddled’ with a couple, and invented a couple of my own. Researching where they are, and how they can provide clues to the mystery, is taking time, as is the background reading about such stones and their place in history.

Writing Deaf

Another thing that is causing me to write slowly is getting to grips with the character of Joe Tanner, my deaf leading man. It’s not just a case of being careful not to write, ‘he said,’ but to use ‘he signed’ instead, and there are many other factors to consider from a technical point of view. For example: I have a scene where Joe is out on the moor, the weather is foul, and a thunderstorm is coming in. The scene is from Joe’s point of view, so I cannot describe any sounds. Therefore, we, the reader, have to feel the thunder. I have to create the atmosphere with one sense missing, sound, because Joe doesn’t know what sound is. That’s proving to be interesting to write, and his deafness has a knock-on effect on other characters.

Dalston, his lover, knows how to sign, and Joe can read lips if people speak clearly, but until now, if Joe wanted to communicate with another character, he had to have Dalston there to interpret. He uses the written word, of course, and has improved his writing under Fleet’s guidance, and he can read. Some of the other characters have been having lessons in sign with varying degrees of success, so I have found a way around that issue.

The OS map is permanently open on my desk these days

How does a man deaf since birth read? Joe doesn’t hear the words in his head. He can’t. He’s never heard them out of his head, so, instead, he uses images. He visualises what he’s reading if you like, but as he is currently reading books about ancient standing stones, and he’s never seen half of what he is reading about (long barrows, menhirs, cists etc.), Fleet has been offering him illustrations to assist.

Joe is the MC in this story, a spotlight he shares with Dalston, and I’m really enjoying the challenge. By the way, Neil and I have now both passed our course in basic British Sign Language (BSL), and intend to keep it going between us, for practice, add more words and phrases to our arsenal, and, hopefully, improve.

Complicated Plot

You know me, I like to make my mysteries challenging for the characters and thus, the reader, and yet aim for a satisfying denouement. Well, this one is not only complicated by Joe’s deafness and a shift in his relationship with Dalston, but also by the subject matter.

My very dodgy sketch of the symbols that play a big part in the story

It’s actually a simple challenge. Lord Clearwater wants to know the story of the ancient monoliths that stand within his property boundary. What were they for? Why is there one embedded in the walls of the ruined abbey? And what do the symbols mean? Carved stones are rare in Cornwall, it’s more of a Pictish thing, apparently, and yet, one of the standing stones has carvings on it. Lord Clearwater’s mystery is only one thread, however, there is another far more sinister but also historic, and that, Joe stumbles upon while researching the stone row. I won’t say too much more about that, because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but suffice to say, there is also a deadline, there will be an ‘action climax’ when I get to it (I am nearly there), and, hopefully, everything will tie up and make sense. Right now, I am reaching the part in the story where clues are coming together and, for the sake of accuracy, I am having to go back and forth between the written chapters to ensure the clues laid down early on, tie-up with the untangling of the plot at the crisis point.

And then there are visitors.

At this time of year, we have many regular visitors returning to the island where we live. Neil works in a bar, and it’s very popular with British visitors who like to come and say hello and catch up on island news. In the winter months, I’m a ‘bed at nine’ kind of person and am often up at three or four in the morning to start work. Right now, though, we are being taken out to dinner, and we’re entertaining at home sometimes, and that means later nights, and thus, later mornings. My writing time is compressed somewhat, as is my energy. Not complaining, it’s a very sociable time of year and makes up for the seven months of winter when we hardly see anyone, but I am more tired than usual, so I am working slower.

Recent early morning view from the balcony

But I am still ploughing through draft one of Larkspur two. I am up to 85,000 words, with probably another 25,000 to go, and I am aiming to have the draft finished in the next two weeks. After that, there will be the second and third draft, the cover to commission, and so on, and of course, the title to find. That’s yet to fall into place, but it will before long. In the meantime, I have commissioned my illustrator to produce a much better version of my sketch of the standing stones, and I am expecting a miraculous drawing or two to come through within the next week or so. I’ll post it on a future blog when it does.

I’ll be back next week with more author chat, but for now, it’s back to the mystery…

https://www.facebook.com/jacksonmarshauthor/

What’s in a Title?

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What’s in a Title?

I am currently working on the first draft of the second Larkspur Mystery, and I’ve still not landed on a title. Titles usually come to me easily, but not this time. So, I thought, today, I would chat about some of my titles, explain where they came from and perhaps, that will give me inspiration for Larkspur Two, as it’s currently called.

Early Titles

Years ago, when I was young and everything was in black and white, I wrote a story. I was unemployed waiting for a new job to start, but the start date was delayed, and I had three months sitting around in a garret room (honestly) with very little money, so I sat and wrote all day, in longhand. It was a simple story about a young man running away from home and discovering London, falling for another young man who turned out to be a rent boy, and the friendship and eventual love affair that ensued. Towards the end, the pair went to Kent, had the best time of their lives, then came home, and a tragedy happened. I called that story ‘In From the Garden’.

Why?

No idea, really. It just felt right, but later, I realised that the two MCs had in fact come back from the garden of England, as the county of Kent is known, so maybe it came from there.

Gay erotic romanceSimilarly, the title of my first published book just came to me, and because I liked the phrase, I kept it. ‘Other People’s Dreams’ is about a rich man hiring four young, cute gay guys to crew his boat around the Greek islands. The job comes with a generous package of benefits and pay, but there are ‘certain strings attached.’

The inspiration for the story came to me when I was sitting on a beach here on Symi. I was on holiday here then, on my own, and was watching a yacht coming into the otherwise deserted bay. As it came close, I saw the crew were taking down the sails, and then I noticed they were all naked, and they were all men. ‘That’s someone’s dream,’ I thought, and suddenly, I not only had an idea for a story but also its title. That boat and the boys aboard were someone else’s dream. Simple.

The Mentor Series

Setting about a series of books that took older/younger and coming out as the key themes, I thought up another story that was mainly based around sex. This was another person’s dream, that of Camden, the MC, who is hired to mentor four younger gay men in a deserted house. His role is to help them develop their writing and personal skills, and overcome sexual inhibitions. I wanted the location of the story to be somewhere out of the way, and the title to reflect this, and that’s how I came up with The Mentor of Wildhill Farm.

Then, I thought, I’ll write a second one in the non-related series. (They are similar in theme, older/younger, coming out etc., but not with the same characters.) I knew it had to be The Mentor of… something and realised I had three words to come up with. One describes the atmosphere (wild), the second is a geographical feature (hill), and the third is the location of the story (farm). So, I made a list of suitable adjectives and locations.

  1. Remote, barren, lost, alone, distant, private…
  2. City, village, moor, wood, forest, marsh…
  3. House, estate, hall, ridge, castle, abbey…

From that brainstorming exercise, I came up with three titles for three more Mentor books, the Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge (I wanted to convey a barren landscape and rock climbing), of Lostwood Hall, and of Lonemarsh House. Each first part of the location reflects the younger man/men of the stories; wild, lost, alone, abandoned.

I was rather pleased with the subtlety, but I didn’t plan it.

Deviant Desire

What was more planned, and what took longer to arrive at, were the titles of the Clearwater novels, and of all of them, Deviant Desire took the longest to drop into place.

I think it started out as ‘Deviant Gaslight’ or something equally bizarre. I wanted to convey the Victorian era, shadows and deviancy, but then I wondered how the light from a gas lamp could be deviant. I sifted through all kinds of ideas as I was writing it because titles often come to me during the first draft. I must have entertained Dark Shadows, and then remembered it was a TV series, and how can shadows be light? I have my notes beside me, and in them, I see I also considered Deviant Lamplight, which was its title at the end of draft one. The word ‘deviant’ was clearly important, and as I went through the second draft, I asked myself what and who was I talking about? Silas was deviant (any gay man then was considered deviant), and he had a desire for sex, later for Clearwater, and their love would have been called a deviant desire, so that made sense. But the villain also had a desire for revenge and a desire to kill, and that, of course, is also deviant. By the end of draft two, I’d settled on ‘Deviant Desire’, and I am pleased to say, it is my best-selling novel to date.

Like the Mentor titles, the Clearwater series started out with a formula. In this case, an adjective and a noun, and I wanted all the forthcoming titles to have an adjective on the same theme as ‘deviant.’ I have a list somewhere, cribbed from a thesaurus or two, and from that list I came up with the words which best suited the story.

Twisted Tracks refers to the deviancy of both hero and villain, the laying of a tempting trail into a trap, and the climax which happens on a moving train.

Unspeakable Acts was a gift because I wanted a story set around a theatre, and chose the Royal Opera House, where not only were entertainment acts performing, but where the star couldn’t speak what he’d been ordered to speak by the villain. The villains were also involved in what Victorians called ‘unspeakable acts’, i.e. gay sex, and the Cleaver Street brothel. (Based on the Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889.)

Fallen Splendour came about because I wanted to base the mystery around a poem used as a coded message. One of my favourites is ‘The Splendour Falls’, an insert into a longer poem by Tennyson. He was alive at the time the story is set, so I dragged him into the story too. I liked the word ‘fallen’ because its reference to ‘fallen women’, as they were known then. Silas is a ‘fallen man’, you might say, and if the truth about Clearwater was known, he too would ‘fall’ from grace.

And so it went on.

Bitter Bloodline is about an ancient, bitter feud and Bram Stoker (in my world, then working on the beginnings of Dracula). Bitter also refers to the taste of a certain wine from the region of Transylvania, which plays a part in the story.

Artful Deception revolves around a piece of art and also refers to the way the characters outwit each other with theatrical devices.

From then on, the titles change. Things had happened in the series, and issues were resolved (no spoilers, but if you have read them, you might remember who has left the stories by then), and so, I was freer to play with the titles.

Home From Nowhere came to me during the writing and still gives me the same chill when I read the title as I felt when I wrote a short scene between Jasper and Andrej (Fecker). Fecks asks where Jasper is from, and Jasper tells him his background.

‘You come from everywhere,’ Mr Andrej said. ‘But you come from nowhere. Like me.’

That led to the title, and I wanted to use it at the very end of the story. However, watch out for doing this because it is such a cliché. It’s as much a cliché as characters in film repeating themselves for emphasis. ‘I know, son…(beat)…I know.’ Eek! Cringe, don’t do it. Similarly, finishing a novel with its title gives me the same creeps, so I changed it slightly for Jasper’s final speech.

‘I feel like I’ve been nowhere all my life, but now I’ve come home.’

Bless Jasper. He and Billy are each one half of a pair, and that’s how One Of A Pair came about. There is another play on words in there, and you will understand when you read the book.

At this point in these reis, I sidestepped to go backwards and explore how Silas and Fecker met. I reckoned a clever title wouldn’t be right, so I went for the simple Banyak & Fecks, their nicknames for each other. The title gave me the structure of the book. The nicknames come about during the story, but they are not the characters’ original names. Thus, the first quarter of the book is titled ‘Andrej’, the second, ‘Silas’, the third, ‘Andrej and Silas’, and it’s not until we come to the last quarter we get them fully-fledged as ‘Banyak & Fecks’. By then, they have become an inseparable pair, forever locked in a bromance, avoiding the Rippe’s knife and unknowingly about to step into Deviant Desire as two of the main characters.

In book nine of the series (not counting the prequel), I returned to the formula of the start of the series with Negative Exposure. The title refers to several aspects of the story; photography, posing naked, the risk of being found out… And in book ten, the only one without a figure on the cover, I couldn’t think of anything better than The Clearwater Inheritance. That was because it reflects not only to the main plot, the inheritance but also suggests something is coming after, and that something is the Larkspur Mysteries.

The Stoker ConnectionYou know, I’ve waffled enough for now, and still haven’t explained the Stoker Connection, The Blake Inheritance or Curious Moonlight, but I hope, by now, you’ve had an insight into how I come up with my tittles.

Except, it seems, for Larkspur Two.

Standing stones, ancient symbols, disappearances, a deaf main character, the wilds of Cornwall… There has to be something in there. I’ve just not got it yet.

Oh… By writing this, the word ‘signs’ has dropped into my head as a frontrunner, but Signs what or what Signs…? This is how my mind works, and I’ll leave you while it hopefully works some more, and I find the title. I am up to 80,000 words in the first draft, and I’ll tell you more about it soon. For now, I’m off.

Have a good week.

Jackson

You can find all my titles on the Jackson Marsh author page on Amazon.

What Do I Call My Character?

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What Do I Call My Character?

‘No One Can Take Away Your Name.’ So says a character in The Clearwater Inheritance, and it’s true. It also reminds us that when we create a character’s name, it becomes very difficult to change it, especially when writing a series. So, how do you get it correct from the start?

I saw a post in a Facebook writers’ group the other day where an author was asking for advice about naming her characters. She gave a brief outline of each one, and then asked, ‘What should I call them?’ A brief outline isn’t much to go on, so I briefly told her what I do when I need to name a character.

Below are my thoughts on the subject in greater detail, and some of the ways I go about naming characters.

It is important to ask yourself some questions.

When do your Characters Live?

I am currently writing in the 1880s and my stories are set in England. Recently, when working on ‘Guardians of the Poor’, I was inspired by a newspaper article from the time. Mentioned in it was a workhouse official named Edward Capps. I took his name and made him the master of the Hackney workhouse, partly to keep some realism, partly because I wanted a villain with a fairly ordinary, yet slightly odd name, and it is an easy one to read. His henchman in that story is called Skaggot, a far more Dickensian name, and one which reads like a cross between skag and maggot, neither of which are very nice words. Skag is slang for heroin and was in use in the 1880s, and we all know what we think of maggots.

It’s worth remembering that some names in common usage today did not exist in Victorian times, so it’s important to check what era you are writing in, and the name trends of the time. These days, we might find Christian names such as Brooklyn, Phoenix, Brighton and other places as that seem to be a trend. Similarly, names from popular TV shows crop up from time to time. For example, there was an influx of Charlenes and Scotts when Neighbours first became popular in the UK. If you look at censuses from the late 1800s you will find a wealth of Mary-Ann, Charlotte and Victoria, and James, Albert and William. Far more traditional.

What country is the character from?

In Greece, it’s traditional for a couple’s first son to take the name of his paternal grandfather. I am sure the same kind of tradition applies in other countries, and in classes of British society. Sometimes, a mother’s maiden name is used, or a grandmother’s or a more distant relative. One of my brothers is named after a great-great-uncle, my other brother has among his names one of my father’s names, Clayre, which is an unusual name, and none of us knows where it came from.

I have written characters from Ireland, so I needed Irish names, and these can be very different from English names. Some are the same or very similar, for example, I have a character named Karan, and that’s the Irish spelling of Karen, so details are important to bear in mind. Ditto characters from Scotland, Ukraine and Transylvania, and others who appear in the Clearwater Mysteries, have country-appropriate names. My Romanian count wouldn’t have been called Charlie Smith. He is Roman Movileşti from the House of Bogdanesti (or Musat) because he has a lineage dating back to 1392.

Names can also make excellent book titles

An aside. When writing ‘Deviant Desire’, the first of the Clearwater Mysteries, I introduced a character called ‘Fecker’. There’s more about that name below, but his real name is Andrej, and that’s all we know about his name to start with. Later in the story, he appears at Clearwater’s house and is introduced by the footman. I wanted to raise a slight smile among my readers, and so gave the footman the task of announcing Andrej with his full name. Therefore, the name had to be complicated, but appropriate, and I went for Andrej Borysko Yakiv Kolisnychenko. Admittedly, not easy to read, and he was soon known as Mr Andrej, but his name was important. If/when you read through the series, including ‘Banyak & Fecks’ and particularly, ‘The Clearwater Inheritance,’ you will come to see why Andrej has these names, and why they are so important to him. As his mentor says during one of the stories, ‘No one can take away your name.’

As well as considering the character’s country, you should consider his location. There are differences in Christian and surnames between someone who is East London poor and someone who is West London rich. You don’t want to use cliché though. Not every East End scallywag was called Charlie, Bert or Dodger, and not all barmaids are called Betsy, Maisy and Poll. Try and be inventive, and one way to do that is to use nicknames. More about that in a moment.

How old is your character?

As I said, names, like clothes, come and go in fashion. Remember that your character may be 60 now, but when he was born, there may have been a different trend for names. When I was popped out, Toby was hip but unusual, these days, it’s more common.

You have to think, ‘Who were the parents, and what would they have called him/her?’ This gives you character background and some backstory, and a name can say a great deal about a character’s ancestors and parents. Think of the trends at the time and what was popular. Such things can include, the TV programmes of the time, pop singers, royalty, politicians, explorers, anyone hitting the newspapers in your country at the time of your character’s birth.

Parents, after all, are the ones who do the naming.

Take my main player in The Clearwater Mysteries: Archer Camoys Riddington, 19th Viscount Clearwater, Lord Baradan of Hapsburg-Bran, Honorary Boyar Musat-Rashnov, to give him his full set of names and titles. Obviously, I don’t refer to him by all of them all the time. The official announcements happen only two or three times during 11 books, and most of the time he is known as Archer, Archie, Your Lordship or Lord Clearwater. It depends on the status between characters. Titled friends would call him Clearwater, servants, My Lord, his lover, Archie, and so on.

Archer was named by his father, a hideously military man, who was obsessed with the Battle of Agincourt. Archer’s brother is called Crispin as the battle was fought on that day, and Archer is named after the longbowmen who were responsible for the victory. He’s also got Camoys as a name because he was one of the commanding officers.

So, think ‘Who named this character’ bascule you can be sure it wasn’t you.

Fantasy names

Having said that, you do name your characters, and none of the above thoughts may apply if you’re writing fantasy. There, you can be extra-creative, but be careful. Make sure your names are easy to read. Marthigglysistbour from the planet Zyghrthithril ain’t that easy to visually digest. I am immediately put off a book if the title has in it a difficult-to-read name. The Kronghstyz Series of Sci-Fi fantasies might fill its author with pride, but for me, it would get me scrolling past.

Names to suit characters

This is one of my faves. I love checking out what names mean or thinking about why characters are called what they are. I do this a lot, sometimes just to amuse myself with obscure references and meanings, sometimes because it suits the story.

Jasper Blackwood

This morning, I wrote a newspaper article from 1882, and in it, mentioned a local policeman. ‘It seems to me the man were murdered,’ Inspector Trawlish of the Cornish Constabulary said. The name came out of my fingers rather than my head, but I wanted something vaguely Cornish-sounding and thought of fishing. Trawler would have been too obvious for a detective, but Trawl-ish sounds like he’s not very accurate in his work, so I went with that. Later, I also had a tea rooms owner and she popped out as Mrs Killraddock. I don’t know why. Probably because it also sounds Cornish (and the story is set there in 1890), but looking at it again, I imagine Mrs Killraddock being not very good at cooking kippers. ‘Don’t ask her to make breakfast, she’ll kill yer ‘addock.’

Meanwhile… In The Clearwater Mysteries, Silas Hawkins is named after the priest who delivered him and slapped him into life, Father Patrick. However, Silas’ mother wanted the Priest’s name before he was ordained, and that was Silas. To have called him Patrick O’Anything Irish-sounding would have been a cliché.

Thomas Arthur Payne

Thomas Payne is named because he is from a part of Kent I know well and there, there live a large collection of families called Payne. Simple. It also provided me with a play on words when Tom Payne and James Wright become involved in the detective agency. They were going to call it ‘The Wright-Payne Detective Agency’ until Silas pointed out another meaning.

If you want to find the best examples of names suiting characters, you only have to read Dickens. He was a master of characterisation through naming as you can see with Uriah Heap, Mr Bumble, Uncle Pumblechook, and who can forget Dick Swiveller from The Old Curiosity Shop? Come to that, what about Master Bates (Charlie), one of the boys from Oliver Twist?

We’ll say no more, and move on.

Nicknames

I like to give my characters nicknames for two reasons.
1) It’s what happens in real life, and
2) They can help define characters and relationships.

In the Clearwater Mysteries, Silas calls Andrej, ‘Fecker’ because, in Silas’ Irish accent, ‘He’s a very handsome Fecker.’ The name stuck. Similarly, Fecker, shortened to Fecks, calls Silas Banyak. In the Ukrainian village Fecker comes from, a banyak was a small cooking pot into which you’d put all kinds of stuff to produce one meal. Thus, for Fecker, Silas is a mixture of all things bubbling away and always on heat. Banyak was also the name of a faithful horse that brought him halfway across Europe, so the name also symbolises Silas’ loyalty to his friend.

Beware the Obvious

To finish with, here are a few things I suggest you look out for when inventing names.

  • Make sure they don’t all start with the same letter. Archer, Andrew, Andrej, Allan, Alice and Amy all appearing on one page, even in one novel, is confusing.
  • Ensure the name are time and place appropriate
  • Remember who named them. Two of my characters are named after places. Jasper Blackwood got his surname from the workhouse where he was placed as a baby. Dalston Blaze got his name because he was an unknown child rescued from a fire in a place called Dalston. He was entered into the workout register as ‘The boy from the Dalston Blaze’ and the name stuck.
  • Ensure that you proofread and keep the names consistent (says he!). It’s easy to miss a letter or not see a typo. I often write Adnrey instead of Andrej and never see it.
  • Tip: When I am reading through a full MS and come across a typo, I immediately do a search/find for that misspelt word. That way, I can pick up any other instances and correct them before I miss them again.
  • Don’t make names too complicated, even if it reads perfectly well to you.
  • Try and say something about your character in their name (see Dickens)
    Keep a list of names used so you don’t repeat yourself. This can be tricky in places and times when something like 50% of males were all called by the same name, but you’ll find a way around it.
  • Consider nicknames, but make sure you explain, subtly, that Silas is also called Banyak, and Andrej is also called Fecker, or Fecks, etc.
  • Keep nicknames consistent with the character using them. For example, only Andrej calls Lord Clearwater ‘Geroy’. It means noble in his Ukrainian, so it would be inappropriate for others to use it. Only Andrej’s closest finds are allowed to call him Fecker, so nicknames can also show relationships between characters.

Resources

And finally, another tip.

There are hundreds of baby naming websites out there, simply search for ‘popular boy/girl names,’ and you will be set for life. If writing in the modern-day.

If writing in the past, census lists, passenger lists, ‘popular Victorian names’ searches, and so on will all be invaluable.

If writing about Irish characters, or wherever, do the same thing. ‘Popular Irish names…’ or search for names of Celtic saints, if you want something mystical and old. Countries, place names… Be inventive, find them on Google Maps.

Save a bookmark file named ‘character names’ or something, and put in there the links to websites you find that are of use.

There, those were my random thoughts on naming characters. I’m off now to work on chapter 17 of the next Larkspur Mystery (still untitled), where I will be inventing more names because I’ve got something like eight murder victims to think up.

It’s all part of the fun.

Thanks for reading and I’ll be back next Saturday.

How Do I Publish So Often?

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How Do I Publish So Often?

A couple of weeks ago, my Saturday post was about Self-Publishing and how I do it. After that, I wrote a post about how I improve my manuscript. I wrote these in response to questions I’d received by email and on my Facebook page. Sitting outside our local kafeneion the other afternoon, I fell into conversation with someone who asked, ‘How do you write so many stories?’ or words to that effect. The answer was simple, ‘It’s my job.’

There is a simple answer: discipline and organisation.

This week, I thought I would give you an insight into my writing process.

It’s My Job

My typing station this morning.

I see writing and self-publishing as a job and one that I enjoy doing. That means I suffer most of what everyone suffers when they are work-conscious. If I don’t write, it’s like not turning up for work. If I am writing and I am interrupted, it’s like being disturbed at any workplace; someone else is paying for me not to be working. If I take a break, I am still thinking about work for when I get back. I have a mental in-tray and a to-do list. I deal with admin before I start writing. I put away the phone and its distractions until I have a break.

You see? Just like working in an office, except without being paid. I mean, if someone paid me even €1.00 per hour for my writing, I would be ‘As rich as Croesus by teatime‘ as Barbary Fleet says in The Guardians of the Poor.

My Daily Routine

And when I say daily, I mean seven days per week.

I’m an early riser, so I am usually up around four in the summer, a little later in the winter. Sometimes I’m up at 3.30, sometimes not until five, in which case I feel like I am late for work. I read the news, though I don’t know why, and I have a cup of tea, before commuting to work. This involves crossing the porch from the house to the ‘workhouse’, as I call our extra bit or property that houses our offices and laundry.

My other desk is where I research and make notes in books. Currently, there’s a rough map of part of the Larkspur estate, plus my ‘Clearwater Bible’.

PC switched on, tea by my side… First, I check my emails in MailWasher. Download and reply, or set aside for later.
Then, I turn on Firefox, check my overnight sales, have a quick look on Facebook in case there are any messages.
If I have any writing work for other people, I do that first. This can range from ten minutes to a couple of hours, and it varies.
5.45 in the morning, I go for a three-mile walk. Well, okay, so not every day, and it depends on when the sun comes up, but in Greece, in August, you need to be out early if you’re walking. Most days, I just have another cup of tea and try not to feel guilty.

However, when I do manage a walk, I am still working. I plan the day’s chapter in my head, telling myself the story like a first draft, and then, when I get back to write it down, it’s like an improved second draft.

So, admin done, walk done, real paid work done, I can then set about my story.
I try to write a chapter each day. Or, 3,000 to 4,000 words.
The best days are when I have no paid work because then, I have more time. Best for my creativity, but not for my bank, of course. Then, I start writing as early as four or five and blast through until I can do no more.

I stop for lunch at 11.00, although we don’t eat until 12.00. Bear in mind, I’ve usually done five or six hours by now, and that’s why I don’t go back to work until around 14.00. A three-hour lunch break? Of course, I have to get in an episode of Survivor and currently two of The Amazing Race.

Notes made during ‘Inheritance’, keeping track of the Riddington family tree.

Afternoons vary, but often I’m at the desk for another two hours or so, reading through the morning’s work, or sometimes adding more words.

At 15.30 (ish) in the summer, I go for a siesta, after which I’ll probably join the husband at his bar and relax. Sometimes, mainly in the winter, I’ll work through the afternoon until five, giving me a 12 hour day, but with a couple of hours off in the middle; so a 10-hour day is not uncommon.
Now and then, I take a day off, but even when I have to be away from the writing for a day, I get the admin done first.

That’s how I write between 3,000 and 4,000 words per day. More on a good day.

What do I do With all Those Words

Above is what I do when banging out a first draft. When working on a second, third, fourth etc., the route remains the same, but instead of writing, I am rewriting or editing. Later, I am checking, then double-checking, so no hours are wasted.

I keep notes as I go. I used to do this in a book, and sometimes, I still do, but recently, I’ve started putting my thoughts in another Word document. This is because there’s no room on my PC desk to put a notepad beside me. I have to put it in my lap, write the note, and then put it back each time, and that’s cumbersome.
So, I type, telling myself the story from head to fingers. I pause now and then to make a note. For example, the current WIP, the second Larkspur Mystery, is currently raising many questions which need to be answered. So, I have incorporated a table into my flow-sheet, my plot outline, or as I have labelled it, ‘Vow storyline’ because ‘Vow’ was going to be part of the title. This table is simply a list of questions to answer later or get rid of later if I don’t need them. An excerpt reads:

How does Dalston translate the symbols? With Fleet’s help
What do the symbols mean?

If the nine lines were a count, what did the other symbols mean?

 They tell the story of the…

That won’t mean anything to anyone but me, and I’ve doctored it so there are no spoilers, but it’s an example of how I keep notes as I go.

Another thing I do is change the text to red when I have used the idea. Example:

Joe examines what he can of the 2nd stone within the ruin walls – at the altar end of the church, so very important.
Dalston translates the standing stone’s symbols according to Joe’s theory.

The red is an idea I have used, the black is yet to be done. I do this just to keep myself in check.

Be Organised.

From the Clearwater ‘bible’, a chart of main characters’ ages through the years.

Discipline is one thing, organisation is another.
I am lucky as I am semi-retired, but even if you only have one hour a day for writing, that one hour is for writing, and you need to be firm about that. Even if you’re only sitting and thinking, you are working. Even if you write rubbish, you are writing. Some days, I write a chapter, and the next, I put it in the ‘cuts’ folder because I thought it was no good. Later, I may take an idea from it or just a sentence. Never trash, always keep, because you never know…
I have a folder for each book, and within it, other folders for research, images, and drafts. The main folder soon fills up with individual chapters, and these, I name in detail.
Current WIP chapters are labelled:
01 Newspaper September 11th 1890
02 Joe and standing stones September 12th
03 Breakfast 12th
Chapter numbers keep the order, the text reminds me of what’s in each one, and the dates are there to remind me of the timeline.
When draft one is done, I put them all together, read through and make any find/replace changes. For example, if I decide to change a name. (Dalston started out as Clayton, but I changed his name halfway through writing ‘Guardians’, and it’s much easier to wait until the full draft is finished, and then use Find/Replace in Word to make the changes.)
That done, I put draft one in its own folder, and take the full draft apart, putting each chapter separately in the draft two folder. Then, I work through each chapter with ProWritingAid as I edit, improve, rewrite, etc.
Put draft two together. Read it over a couple of days for continuity, make any changes, pick up some typos, etc.,

And repeat… Until I am happy I have a final draft.

Eventually, I get to a stage where I am in danger of fiddling with the MS too much, and that’s when I send it to be proofed. By then, my designer will be working on the cover, and I would have finalised the blurb.
While the MS is off for proofing, I might start on the next book… And so it goes on.

Finally

Of course, the view fom the window helps.

So, when I am asked how I publish so many books, I can only say it is because I am disciplined and organised. Each time I write a chapter, I aim to improve my style. Each time I publish a book, I aim to make the next one better. After a while, you find you write better first drafts, and thus, have more time to spend on second and third drafts. You learn to pick up on your common errors and repetitions, and simply don’t write them.

I guess the bottom line is that you keep at it, and the more you write, the better you (should) be at it.
As for where the ideas come from, well, that’s a post for another day.

If you’ve not yet started the Larkspur series, book one, ‘Guardians of the Poor’ is now available on Kindle, and will be in paperback as soon as I get the full cover, which I hope to have this weekend.

Keep reading!

Jackson

Self-Publishing: How I Do It

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Self-Publishing: How I Do It

Everyone should write a book, and many people do. Good. What you then do with it is another matter. What follows is what I do. I’m not saying it is the best or only way, but it has worked for me for several years, and I’m happy to share my thoughts and experience. So, here is what I do to get my books published.

No Vanity Publishing

First of all, I have never paid a vanity publisher and I never will. That’s where you pay a company to produce your book, and they send you a few copies and promise to sell the rest. You should never pay anyone to publish your work. Publishers should pay you, and that’s that. Of course, getting your work to a publisher is one story, having them accept it is another, and then having to abide by their guidance is something else entirely, and a topic for another day.

If you want to find an agent or a publisher, I recommend The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. It has everything you need.

My Method, Step by Step

I self-publish my books on Amazon as paperbacks, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. There are many other ways to sell your book online, but this is the method I use.

My desk this morning.

I Write the Book

First, I write the book… Actually, first I write the blurb, the text that goes on the back of the cover and on the book’s Amazon page. Doing that helps me focus on what the book is about, and I can always change the blurb later. So, with an overall idea of the story noted down, I start writing.
I write draft one.
I start again with draft two.
Then I start on draft three, which is more like an edit of draft two, then draft four… and so on. Often, before I have finished editing, I set my mind to the cover.

Covers

Book covers sell books, and it’s worth investing in a designer who knows what they are doing.

I used to design my own covers, and there are still some of my older books out there (as James Collins) with my designs on the front. Since writing as Jackson Marsh, I have employed a professional designer. My designer charges me €80.00 for the main front cover (for Kindle), the full cover (for print), and her price includes changes, setting the back text, working out the spine and sending me the upload file. All Jackson Marsh covers have been designed by Andjela K.

There are several places you can go to find a designer, and prices vary. I found Andjela through People Per Hour and her page is here. Andjela K. From there, you can explore the rest of the site.

Recently, I commissioned another artist to draw me some illustrations of the Clearwater characters, mainly for my website, but perhaps, one day, they will end up in a book. I found Dazzlingdezines on Fiverr.com, and again, you can explore the site from that link. I recently commissioned my first map from Khayyam Aktar who I found on the same site.

These sites have strict rules about copyright and ownership of commissioned work, and it is worth reading them before you commission someone.

The map designed by Khayyam Aktar

When the Writing Stops

The book is finished, yippee! You’ve written it, edited it, cut and paste, ripped things out, started again… whatever, you are happy with your final draft. If you are not, ask yourself why and go back and fix what your gut tells you isn’t right.
Then, read it through again from top to bottom to see how many typos you can pick up.
Leave it alone for a week or so.
Read it again and see how many more typos you can pick up.
Hire a proof-reader.

Now then, there is also a stage there which I’ve missed out and that’s working with an editor. I have a friend who is a professional editor and who reads and comments on my third or fourth draft, and I listen to what he says. You may want to hire a professional editor, but I can’t tell you what costs you might incur, because I’ve never paid an editor.

Back to the Proof-Reading.

You can read your own work 100 times and still not notice every error of spelling or punctuation. I used to have several friends read my final draft and send me their own notes/corrections, and frankly, it was clumsy, and I felt bad about asking them. These days, I hire a professional proof-reader, Ann Attwood.

One of Dazzlingdezines’ character sketches

When I think my manuscript (MS) will be ready in, say a couple of weeks, I contact Ann to fix a date when she can work on it. That then becomes my deadline and pushes me towards getting the MS polished. Ann reads it, I wait like a schoolboy expecting an exam result, and the MS comes back. In this case, it comes in Word with ‘track changes’ open, so I can see what Ann has changed or fixed, and I can agree with them or not. (I invariably do.)

Having read through the MS again, I check the blurb one last time. Then, I send the blurb to Andjela to add to the full cover, and give her a rough idea of the page count so she can fix the spine. You won’t know the final page count until the book has been laid out, so make sure your designer is flexible about making changes after the cover is done.

As for the cost, you should expect to pay around £1.00 per 1,000 words, though prices vary, and different proof-readers charge different amounts.

Layout

Previously, I used Adobe InDesign to do my own internal layout. Remember, I am not a designer, but I knew how to use about 10% of the program and that was all I needed.

Other Worlds Ink author services

From ‘Negative Exposure’ onwards, I have been using Other Worlds Ink to layout my pages, and they do a great job. They understand about widows and orphans (odd words hanging on the first and last lines that don’t look right) and use a program that takes care of other technical things that were tedious to do in InDesign. They also sort out the page numbering, content, front and back matter* setting, and insertion of maps and illustrations – should I ever have any.

My files come back from Other Worlds Ink, and they supply the PDF for print, the various files for e-readers, Kindle etc, and they will also undertake changes when, a few months after publication, you realise you’ve left in a couple of typos.

* Front and back matter. Your book should have ‘front matter’ for sure. That’s the publishing details. If in doubt, look at the front pages of one of my books and you will see what I include; legal notice, credits, list of other novels etc.

And So, To Amazon

Everything you need to know about self-publishing via Amazon is on Amazon, you just need to know where to find it.

Kindle Direct Publishing(KDP) is the place. First, read the pages on the site.

Set up an account, or use your Amazon account login, and you will find a dashboard that’s easy to use. Mind you, I have been using it for so many years now, I’m bound to say that. I seem to remember some trial and error, but nothing daunting as long as you read everything carefully. They have a very good help department for authors.

To take you through the actual uploading process would take too long, and would be rather pointless as it’s self-explanatory, but…

My author page on Amazon (part of it)

You create an eBook, paperback or both. Upload details such as title and author name, and assign an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). Amazon will assign you one if you are only going to sell on Amazon, and as that’s what I do, I can’t comment on how you go about getting ISBNs for other publishing platforms.

You choose your genre, categories and keywords, and upload your blurb, cover and internal files.

You set your price to ensure you make something on each sale. The base price is a minimum that covers Amazon’s costs. Then, you press submit.

There are processes for checking as you go. You can test the Kindle file on various online readers, and see the print book’s inside to check its layout, and Amazon will get back to you if there are any issues. They are particular about cover size, for example, so always read the guidelines.

A day or so later, sometimes more immediately, a message comes back to say your book is available, and they give you the links to the pages where it appears.

And Afterwards?

Well, that’s all to do with setting up an author page, maybe a website, a Facebook page, organising your publicity, and trying to sell the thing. That is definitely a post for another day.

For more information and advice, I’d suggest joining a Facebook group or two. There are plenty, and you will soon come to realise which is best for you. Everyone’s experience is different, as are their methods, and the above is a basic outline of how I go about it. I’m happy to answer broad questions if I can, and you can contact me on my email here.

Before you do, though, please note: I won’t publish your book for you, I don’t read unsolicited samples, and I’m not going to hold anyone’s hand as they explore Amazon KDP for the first time because all the instructions are there. If in doubt, hire an expert. Yes, you will have to pay, but you won’t be paying a vanity publisher, which means, you keep control of your work from start to finish. Amazon says you can ‘publish for free, but really, you must expect an outlay. Without taking into account my time, I expect to pay around €300.00 to publish one of my books. I pay for the cover design, stock photos to use on the cover, professional proofreading and the layout artist. I do it because I love writing stories and improving my writing with each one.

That’s it. See you next week.

WIP: Guardians of the Poor

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Guardians of the Poor

This week, I want to share with you some inside info on my work in progress. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers.

The Larkspur Mysteries

I have started book one in my new series, ‘The Larkspur Mysteries’, and it’s titled ‘Guardians of the Poor.’ This series follows on from The Clearwater Mysteries, starting a few months after the end of ‘The Clearwater Inheritance.’

Clearwater has set up his ‘academy’, a place where disadvantaged young men can develop their talents and skills. The men come from the streets, the Cheap Street Mission (for ex-rent boys), or from an impoverished elsewhere, but they have all caught Clearwater’s attention because of circumstance, ability or the ‘crime’ of being gay. Academy House, on the Larkspur estate, is under the leadership of a new character called Barbary Fleet, and if you thought Doctor Markland was bonkers, wait until you meet Fleet. At the start of the series, the House only houses four young men, and when we arrive there later in the book, two of them are already on their way to success.

So, it’s a low-key start for the Larkspur Academy (which is not a school), but my intention is to base each new mystery around either the House or someone living there. They won’t all be based on the Larkspur Estate, though. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, in Bow Street Magistrate’s Court…

The story starts with a newspaper article. In fact, it is almost a direct copy of the article that inspired the story, adjusted to fit my plot and character names. My main character is up in court and is being defended by Sir Easterby Creswell, assisted by James Wright. The strange thing, however, is that the main character wants to be sentenced because prison is the only way out of a life-or-death predicament.

He is called Dalston Blaze, and the story is about him and his friend from the workhouse, Joe Tanner. Joe is deaf, and although he’s not on stage much, he is, if you like, the protagonist. It’s him we are putting on the cover, and the lady who does my character drawings, DazzlingDezigns, drew me a portrait based on the model’s photo that Andjela is currently using to produce the cover.

You’ll have noticed that there are already two characters from the Clearwater Mysteries on stage, Cresswell and James. Also appearing in the line up for ‘Guardians’ are, in order of appearance, Silas, Mrs Norwood, Duncan Fairbairn, Archer Lord Clearwater, Jasper Blackwood, Nancarrow, Billy Barnett, Jonathan and Maxwell the footmen, Danylo and Andrej (Fecker) and, if you remember her, Mrs Flintwich, the original cook from ‘Deviant Desire.’

That looks like a big cast list, but some of our favourites only appear briefly because they are staff on the estate, and Dalston Blaze gets to meet some. The story is mainly told from Dalston and Archer’s points of view, though there are some scenes that involve Detective James Wright.

Who Were the Guardians and Why the Poor?

So, what does the title mean?

Dalston and his friend Joe are worker-inmates at the Hackney Workhouse. (Now both 18, they are employed as kitchen helpers, but they still live in the institution, thus, they are worker-inmates.) The workhouses were places funded by the ratepayers of the borough, where the destitute could go for shelter. It’s more complicated than that, but people could apply to become ‘inmates’ and if the board of Guardians approved their cases, could then expect to be housed and fed for as long as necessary. Some ‘indoor paupers’ stayed at the workhouse for years, while others, the ‘in and outs’, only stayed a few nights. Those who only needed a bed for one night, the ‘casuals’, were accommodated in a separate ‘ward’, and if you read ‘Banyak & Fecks’, you’ll get a decent account of what a night in the casual ward was like.

The Hackney Workhouse.

Joe and Dalston have been in the workhouse a long time. Dalston since birth and Joe since the age of 12. Living in a workhouse for so long was uncommon because children were usually sent to orphanages, children’s homes or fostered out, but it happened. If you want to know more about workhouse life, read one or all of the books by Peter Higginbotham, some of which I have been using for my research.

The Guardians were, in effect, the Board of Guardians, or if you like, the Workhouse oversight committee, the gentry and interested parties elected to see to the running of the institutions. Elected, because they were dealing with ratepayers’ money, and thus, the workhouses were accountable to the community.

And it is that accountability that is the catalyst in ‘Guardians of the Poor.’ You see, at my Hackney Workhouse, things are not as they should be. Someone has a whacking great dirty secret he wants covered up, but my protagonist, Joe the deaf guy (now aged 18), knows the secret, and he has the evidence to expose the scandal. Joe and Dalston had a plan, but now Joe is in hiding with the incriminating evidence, and Dalston is in court needing to go to gaol, otherwise, he will be killed for what he knows.

Part of the mystery involves strange symbols written on standing stones.

Enter Clearwater and the Larkspur Academy, and off we go into the story which I shan’t tell you about because I don’t what to spoil it for you. I will say, however, it involves the new academy, the Larkspur estate and house, but also symbols ancient and new, sign language, a fair amount of real history, a young man coming to terms with his sexuality, and an ending that leaves things open for book two.

So, in my story, the Guardians of the Poor are many. The workhouse board of guardians, the two characters who try to expose the nasty secret, and Lord Clearwater and his crew who guard disadvantaged young men who may also be ‘on the crew’ (his euphemism for being gay).

When will Guardians be Ready?

I can’t say just yet. I have finished the second draft at 106,000 words, and now need to go through it line by line for edits. I need to remove some repetitions and unnecessary ideas. When I write a first draft, I often put things into the story that I think will be useful later, or I write a dreadful sentence because I can’t think how to say something decently, and I’ll come back to it. Later, I have to go back to these and either get rid of them or improve them, and often by then, I’ve forgotten I put them there. So, I tread carefully through drafts two and three, which is what I am doing now, and when that is done, I will read the whole thing as one continuous story and make sure it works. Then, there may be more edits before I send it to Ann for proofreading, and after it is laid out, to Maryann for an ARC review. Meanwhile… Andjela is working on the cover.

My writing room.

That’s why I can’t say when the book will be released, but I hope to have it with you by the end of September. I also need to work out what book two will be about as I like to mention the next in a series at the end of the one before.

And that’s me for this week. It’s 40 degrees outside and humid. I have my godson coming for his piano lesson later, and before then, I still have 15 chapters to pick apart and put back together. So, I’ll leave you now and wish you a happy week to come, and hope to see you back here next Saturday.

Last week we took our oldest godson to dinner for his 18th birthday.

The Clearwater Inheritance. The End of the Line?

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The Clearwater Inheritance. The End of the Line?

I have quite a lot of news for you today, starting with the release of ‘The Clearwater Inheritance’, book ten in the series. As I write, the Kindle version is now available to download, and the book is also on Kindle Unlimited. You can find it here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0971F1HT3 That’s the Amazon.com link, but it is available in other Amazon countries/sites too.

The paperback version is still being checked by the Amazon bots and going through that process but should be available any moment if it’s not already out there. You will be able to find it from the main Clearwater Series page here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RPCKF4L

Is this the end of Clearwater?

In a word, no. Having written ten stories and a prequel, so 11 books in total, I thought it might be time for a change. However, I enjoy the Clearwater world and characters so much, I don’t want to let them go. What was starting to become a problem for me, though, was having so many characters I wanted to write about, and I was looking for a way to deal with this. In ‘Inheritance’, I wanted to give a sense of something ending and something about to begin, and I wanted as many of my principles to play a part as possible without the story becoming cluttered. So, without giving anything away…

In ‘The Clearwater Inheritance’, you’ll find four storylines taking place, and all leading to the same end: Who will inherit the Clearwater fortune and name? The story is set in three locations; Larkspur Hall in Cornwall, Clearwater House in London and across Europe. After it becomes clear that the inheritance is in jeopardy, the ‘crew’ split up to work various leads. Some stay at Larkspur, some go to London, and two head off to the Carpathian Mountains. Each team is working their own lead and has their own tasks. Meanwhile, the usurper to the Clearwater fortune is heading towards them with a devious plan of his own.

That’s the basic outline, but Clearwater’s inheritance (and thus, his ability to fund charities, run the mission, help those in need and do what he does) is not the only thing that might be lost. His new venture, The Larkspur Academy, will not happen if he loses the race to secure what is rightfully his. And that’s where the continuation comes in.

I’m now starting on the follow-on series, The Larkspur Mysteries. My intention is to bring in new characters and make each mystery/love story/mashup mainly about one new and central character. However, they exist in the Clearwater world. So, in the first book, which currently has a working title of ‘Dalston Blaze’, we meet an eighteen-year-old chap brought up in a workhouse. He is rescued from a predicament and sent to Larkspur to join the new ‘Academy.’ Thus, some of the existing characters play parts in the new series but are not always central. I’ll say no more for fear of giving away things that happen in ‘Inheritance.’

Thanks

This seems an appropriate place to thank people for their help in making the Clearwater series such a popular success. First of all, you, the readers who keep the writing going not only through book sales and reviews but also through interaction on my Facebook page. I must also thank those who work behind the scenes to ensure historical accuracy, people such as Andy Ward, my railways guru who helps with timetables and routes and all those factual details I love to insert into the fiction. Jenine, my PA, who does sterling work to promote the books and this site, and who keeps me in line with orders to post this and write an interview for that while holding down two full-time jobs, one of which is bringing up my two godchildren. Similarly, I must thank Neil, my husband, for reading the first drafts, calling me a ‘bastard’ for making him cry and laughing in the right places.

On the publishing side, my proofreader, Ann Attwood, tirelessly corrects my punctuation and typos with the patience of a saint and never complains when I repeatedly make the same mistakes despite her notes. Andjela K, my cover designer who, I think you’ll agree, produces some amazing covers. She does this from a few notes I send her and always seems to understand exactly what I am after. For ‘Inheritance’, I would like to thank Khayyam Akhtar, who produced an accurate map of the route two characters take across Europe, including the route of the Orient Express, which features in the story. The map is based on an existing German map of the time. Finally, Scott and Mark at Other Worlds Ink who now do my layout and interior design, and their reviewer Maryann who has been so supportive.

Price changes

And now for some business news. Thanks to various changes in tax and stuff I don’t fully understand, I have to put up the price of my eBooks and paperbacks. We noticed that many people sell their ‘novels’ at the same price as me, but those novels are actually novellas or even short stories. I have always tried to keep my prices low, but I was recently reminded that I am producing full-length novels of at least 90,000 words, and I should be offering them at a price more appropriate to the amount of material. For example, ‘Inheritance’ is 150,000 words long (which is why the print costs are more than usual), and that’s a lot of typing for a return of only $0.17c per sale.

However, for three days starting tomorrow, the first in the series will be run as a giveaway, so ‘Deviant Desire’ will be available for free for a very limited time. This is to celebrate the ‘end’ of the series and hopefully encourage new readers to start at the beginning and carry on through by buying the other 10 books. This, by the way, will be my first ever price rise since I started publishing ten years ago.

Instagram

A quick note. I now have an Instagram account/page/thing, and although I don’t really know what Instagram does, you can now follow me there.

MM Fiction Café on Sunday has an Interview with Archer

The MM Fiction Café will be hosting an interview with Archer, Lord Clearwater, this Sunday, 13th June. Check out their blog post, and find out a little more about Archer than you might already know.

A Treat from Doctor Markland

And finally… Another talented artist has been working with me to produce sketches of some of the characters for the Clearwater Family page, which you can find in the main menu. Dazzling Designz works through a ‘work for sale’ site and has been drawing several of the Clearwater crew over the last few months.

Her latest is a sketch of Doctor Markland, the scatty but brilliant doctor who first appears in ‘Deviant Desire.’ (He actually appears in the prequel, Banyak & Fecks too, if you look closely). The Doc has just appeared in an early scene in the new Larkspur Academy series, so he’s still with us. I thought I’d end by showing you the sketch. This is how I imagine him. Oh, and here’s a little known fact… When I was born, I was delivered — in the harsh winter of 63 when the Romney Marshes were deep in snow and the roads impassable — by our family doctor, Doctor Markland. He was nothing like the Doc in my books, though he did, apparently, take a first look at me and say, ‘He looks like a keen beer drinker; you should call him Toby,’ so he wasn’t far off.

I’ll be back next week. If, in the meantime, you want something to read, then ‘The Clearwater Inheritance’ is out there and waiting.