A Map of the Way Forward

I’m writing a story —or shall I boldly call it a novel?— that’s been giving me a lot of trouble.

All the stuff I’ve written before has seemed to flow easily. Things made sense; POV, voice, choice of scenes, etc. all seemed to come to me (relatively) with no trouble. Mind you, except for the short stories, most of it is just lying around, not at the bottom of a drawer, but in a (forgotten) folder on my computer.

Well, this time, scenes came to me easily too, but that was about it. A lot of scenes. Actually, too many of them; too many things needed to happen at the same time, too many characters to introduce, 3rd person limited POV, 1st person POV, etc. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but I didn’t know how to tell it. I was not happy with it and I was beginning to panic.

I realized at that point, that I needed an outline. Yet, I simply cannot write an outline. If there’s an element of the story that I have to put on paper because I think I might not remember it, then it’s as good as lost. The story is all in my head. The ideas that I cannot cram in my head are as good as gone even if I record them in one way or another.

However, I did my homework diligently. I searched the web for good outlining methods, I even bought a book and followed its suggestions step by step. I'm sure it's a good book. It didn’t work.

Then, I fell upon this site: Write Like Rowling  and everything changed. Because this article, “Story Structure of Sorcerer’s Stone”, which by itself is quite interesting and very useful, led me to Larry Brooks’s Story Fix.

Chances are you’re already familiar with it, or at least heard of it. Larry Brooks has also written a book, "Story Engineering”, but the website gives detailed explanations and great examples, by deconstructing well-known and successful novels.

Story structure. The four parts: the Setup, the Response, the Attack, the Resolution. The first plot point, the midpoint, the second plot point, the pinch points, the hook… The exact place where each of them should be in your story. The meaning and the role of each part, how much and how little to give to the reader at each step. And so on. Very cool stuff that makes a lot of sense. Try it for yourself. Maybe you're already using it, knowingly or not.

So now I think I can say that I’m on track and that I have a very good map. There’s still plenty of freedom of exploring on the road, but the landmarks are there...

And Summer has begun today, which is a good thing...

Drew Buckley Photography

Wanderings on Kindle

After five months of paperback-only life, “Wanderings on Darker Shores – a collection of strange tales and poems” is now also available as a Kindle ebook.

Strange how this feels bittersweet…

Setting up the paperback has been such an intense and satisfying job! I’ve found a lot of good advice on the Internet and I will probably share it here in a nutshell in a future post. From working on the cover with talented artist Steve Santiago and trying to follow editor Mark Durfee’s wonderful advice, to choosing fonts, and flourishes, and page set-up, and struggling with my own perfectionism, this has been an amazing journey.

Compared to it, setting the book up for Kindle —although still involving a bit of research— has proven almost anticlimactic, if I may say so.

The “real” book —and yes, I know I’m blowing my own horn— is so nice to hold in your hands that it’s certainly a pity that all of that is lost on Kindle. But that’s the way of the world now and we have to go with it…

So here they are, both of them, under the same cover…

Not Lost - and a Bit of News

No, I did not get lost in Manhattan... though sometimes I wish I did... :-)

Thanks, everybody, for your comments and good wishes on my previous post. It's kind of late to answer them individually, but please know that I appreciate them and I am very grateful for all of them.

Since I returned home, I've been very busy writing a story at the request of Mike Davis, the editor and publisher of the Lovecraft eZine, who has published one of my stories before. That's done now and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll like it. :-)

Check out the very nice 5* review that "Wanderings on Darker Shores" got at  Pure Jonel ~ Confessions of a Bibliophile. There's also a giveaway for three paperbacks and five pdf copies that ends on April 17th.

And last, but not least, "Airships & Automatons", the steampunk anthology from White Cat Publications -with my story "The Thing with Feathers" in it-  is now available both as a Kindle ebook and as a paperback. Why not give it a try?

Well, Hello 2015

I'm sorry to say that 2014 hasn't been a good year for me. I didn't write about this on the blog -although I did write a post or two that I chose not to publish- because I simply didn't want to think about it, couldn't think about it. Someone extremely dear to me lost her battle with cancer in June, and bad things happened to other people about whom I care a lot.

There is one thing that "saved" me, in a way, and that was working on my novel, my short stories, and preparing the collection of short stories for publication. You know, something like in Simon and Garfunkel's "I am a rock:"

I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;

Holding that real book in my hands was certainly the high moment of the year.

So, what can I say about 2015? I certainly wish it's a very happy one for all of you, for everybody. Probably for the first time in many years, I didn't feel the moment between the 31st of december and the 1st of January as a threshold. 2015 doesn't feel like a new beginning, or a new hope. It's more like this:

I had no idea that this was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 in preparation for the WWII. Well, I can certainly use it this year... and perhaps I won't be just drifting away... like in this song that I love and that sometimes doesn't let me sleep at night with its obsessive refrain....

So, allow me to wish you all the best: good health, love, good books, and good music.... and if you haven't bought it yet, perhaps you might consider buying my book this year...

...from Amazon.com or Amazon. ca. Thank you! :-) :-) :-)

It's Alive!!!!!!

I've been waiting to have a reason to say this for quite some time… LOL

So, yes, “Wanderings on Darker Shores” has been "alive" for a bit more than a week now on Amazon.com, but I was waiting for the LookInside feature to be active and also for other online stores, like Amazon.ca, to include it in their listings.

Faithful readers of this blog will recognize many of these stories and poems, but I’ve also included four stories that have never been published before. These are bigger stories and together they make up for about 42% of the pages in the book, or a bit more than 46% of the total word count.

It is somehow difficult for me to categorize them since it is a rather eclectic collection. I call them strange stories, or weird stories, if you prefer. There are some ghosts in there, even some zombies, some aliens. There is no gore. No “real” horror, unless by suggestion. There are hints. There are shadows.

Actually, the working title was “The Quiet Fantastic” but I changed it to “Wanderings on Darker Shores” not only as an homage to Edgar Allan Poe, but also because I see these stories as incursions into the darker realms that lurk beyond the thin veil of reality....

The fantastic (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic or even better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique) is actually the genre that I think applies best to this book.

Anyway, here it is for now:







Thank you for spreading the word! :-) :-) :-)

Coming Soon...

... to an on-line store near you...

 I simply love the cover! Steve Santiago has made it. Check out his art at illustrator Steve Santiago or on Facebook.