Working away at the new novel right now so I haven't had much time to blog. The next few weeks should be nice and clear which means I can get plenty written before Christmas with only a weeks hiatus when I go to New York in November.
Stephen Fry has started blogging recently so if you want a long read pop over to his web site as he tends to have lots of insightful comments about a whole wealth of things that I have little experience of.
****
Read this week:
Scales by Anthony G. Williams
Hellblazer: Black Flowers by Mike Carey et al
Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful by Mike Carey et al
The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Gathering Pace
The new work is gathering pace. The book is currently at the stage where it grows organically to the point that I don't even know exactly in which direction it will go. It's almost as if the story has a life of its own and its great fun making connections and realising what the story is all about. I'm hoping to have a first draft finished by Christmas that will be full of inaccuracies and errors where characters change shape, size, sides, and species but the back bone of the story will be complete.
*****
Finished the last John Connolly novel which leaves the character in an isolated and vulnerable state. In this book, more than the others, you realise what a troubled and deeply flawed character he is and that even though the story is told from Parker's point of view, as if he is a hero, he might in truth be no better than the troubled people who feel his wrath. You understand now why his relationships with others are at best dysfunctional and why he has isolated himself up on the Maine coast. There is now great ambiguity in the books that I look forward to seeing how Connolly will resolve. Fortunately he's working on a new book.
Read this week:
The Unquiet by John Connolly
*****
Finished the last John Connolly novel which leaves the character in an isolated and vulnerable state. In this book, more than the others, you realise what a troubled and deeply flawed character he is and that even though the story is told from Parker's point of view, as if he is a hero, he might in truth be no better than the troubled people who feel his wrath. You understand now why his relationships with others are at best dysfunctional and why he has isolated himself up on the Maine coast. There is now great ambiguity in the books that I look forward to seeing how Connolly will resolve. Fortunately he's working on a new book.
Read this week:
The Unquiet by John Connolly
Slipped Through the Net
I'm reading a novel at the moment that I have been asked to review and I have to say it is probably one of the worse books that I've ever come across. This creates for me a dilemma in that I feel I should review the book honestly but at the same time I find myself as an unpublished writer of novels assuming that this is how people will react to my own work.
The book in question (which I won't name) is full of clichéd characters, a premise that is seriously flawed, the language is poor and the pace almost lethargic. It's just not a very good book and I'm sure any amount of clever editing would not have helped. But the book has made it into print. The publishers are classed as independent, which if you don't know the publishing world, means small print runs and selling (in the main) via the Internet. Now there are some excellent works that get published by the independents, work that is perhaps niche and would not see the light of day without them, but even by their standards this work is dire and that makes me worry that some publishers will give this part of the industry a bad name by putting out works of a substandard nature. My work, 'The Missing', if it gets published, will probably get taken up by the independents and it concerns me to be tarred with the same brush. All I can hope is that similar to the big publishing houses not every book that comes out can be deemed successful or even 'good'. Perhaps this is one of those that slipped through the net.
The book in question (which I won't name) is full of clichéd characters, a premise that is seriously flawed, the language is poor and the pace almost lethargic. It's just not a very good book and I'm sure any amount of clever editing would not have helped. But the book has made it into print. The publishers are classed as independent, which if you don't know the publishing world, means small print runs and selling (in the main) via the Internet. Now there are some excellent works that get published by the independents, work that is perhaps niche and would not see the light of day without them, but even by their standards this work is dire and that makes me worry that some publishers will give this part of the industry a bad name by putting out works of a substandard nature. My work, 'The Missing', if it gets published, will probably get taken up by the independents and it concerns me to be tarred with the same brush. All I can hope is that similar to the big publishing houses not every book that comes out can be deemed successful or even 'good'. Perhaps this is one of those that slipped through the net.
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