Monthly Archives: September 2011

September 30, 2011 · 10:30 am

Constructive Criticism

I’ve had some weird spam in my time, which stands to reason when you have as many blogs as I do. But I’ve never had anything particularly cheeky before. Till now!

‘Vacation International Travel’ left me a comment yesterday which I found a little hard to take. It was left on the post about the Mills and Boon writing competition, where I mentioned they are opening their arms to new romance writers, and shared the first chapter of last year’s NaNoWriMo effort (a romance of sorts entitled The Single Mum’s Aristocratic Library Assistant).

I’m all in favour of constructive criticism on my work, but when it comes from a bot it feels a little harsh. It was pretty long as well, so I have deconstructed it as follows:

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Glempy’s Pictonaut Challenge: Grenade in the Rain

Not so very long ago I brought a thing to your attention, namely the intentions of writer, scientician and internet user The Rogue Verbumancer to begin a monthly writing challenge via his blog. Every month he will post a picture, and every month The People of The Internet are invited to do a piece of writing around it, 1000 words or so in length. My one for September will follow momentarily; but you should read the other entries too. Only today Lord Verbumancer has linked to them all on his page.

Also before I post this, a disclaimer: I am so out of practice with short stories after all the novelling I’ve sort of forgotten how to do them - they generally read like a chapter from a book now. I don’t think this one does, but I’ve been wrong before. Captain Tact is the only other human to read it so far, and he pronounced it ‘weird’. I’m not sure whether that is good, bad or indifferent. If anyone has any further feedback, you know where the comments box is.

Anyway, here is my take on Grenade in the Rain. Continue reading →

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Tagged as alantitchmarsh, artillery, daisies, future dystopia, glempy, green fingers, grenade in the rain, gryphon, horticulture, pictonaut challenge, shortstories, silent laughter, therogueverbumancer, unicorn, yellow macintosh

September 28, 2011 · 12:02 pm

Poisonous Mushrooms

Cats = Comedy

Lol. This post isn’t really about poisonous mushrooms, that was a cunning ruse to get you attention. It’s really about book 9 and why I’ve been finding it hard to write. I believe it’s a question of genre.

With specific genres, plots tend to come fairly easily once I have a character in mind. The story grows up around the characterisation and dialogue – probably because those are the bits I like playing with most. To give you a for instance, when I was doing fantasy in May I was given two character suggestions and knew immediately what I was going to do with them, so I sat and wrote it.

Humour is not a very specific genre, and to be honest I don’t have a specific character in mind. My vague plan was to write about the experiences of recent graduates living in the city in a sort of bubbly, chick lit way – Sex and the City but with real people who have real relationships, money issues, terrible flats, identity crises, whatever. Not just any old real people, but real Scottish people.

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Sweet Valley Confidential Review

For those who never read any of the Sweet Valley books, here is an overview: gorgeous identical twin sisters grow up in California. They may look the same but by jimminy their personalities couldn’t be more different. Elizabeth, four minutes older, is serious and sensible and wants to be a writer. The younger, Jessica, is the more shallow, cheerleadery type who is forever stealing her sister’s stuff (clothes, boys, etc).

I have been trying to pinpoint exactly when I read them, and I think I’ve narrowed it down to about Primary 5 for the Sweet Valley Twins and Primary 6 for Sweet Valley High – so around the age of 9 or 10. I used to take them out of the library and I think I read most of the things, although I never owned one. Till now! Well, till July, when my mum got me a copy of Ten Years On: Sweet Valley Confidential for my birthday – a look at where the twins are a decade after the high school series ends. Even though there were all kinds of books about what happened after that, including Sweet Valley University and a series where Elizabeth goes to live in England for a while. I think they jumped the shark with SVU – I don’t remember reading many of those ones.

Anyway, “Haven’t you ever wondered what happened when Elizabeth and Jessica grew up?” the tagline asks.

I won’t lie, it hasn’t kept me up at night. Continue reading →

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Tagged as bad writing, francine pascal, jessica wakefield, liz wakefield, nancy drew, shark attack, sweet valley confidential, ULTIMATE BETRAYAL

September 24, 2011 · 11:00 am

Good Search Terms

If you follow me on twitter (@12books12months) you’ll be aware that I am a sporadic stat obsessive. Which basically means I while away certain evenings by checking how many hits the blog had that day, then putting out plaintive messages on social networking sites to increase the numbers. Obviously it would be more constructive to spend this time writing, but whatever, you’re not the boss of me.

This lurking around the WordPress Dashboard offers mixed results, but I think the main thing we can take away from it is that it makes me kind of annoying to be around. I know the best way to get hits is to have interesting stuff to post, not to whinge at folk on Facebook - but that doesn’t stop me. It doesn’t even slow me down. I merely hark back to the glory days of the book festival when I was all kinds of popular without having to do very much, because people wanted to read about what was going on and I happened to be writing about it.

However, the book festival comes but once a year, and to conduct a countdown from this point on until next August would be overkill. So what to write about? Well, stats can help with that, because they show the most popular search terms that have brought people to the blog. Once you know what piqued internet interest in you, it’s merely a case of emulating that success.

Except it isn’t really, because people get to this blog by searching for three things. They either look for “12 books in 12 months” or some variation thereon; “Amanda Palmer”; or some one-off random search term that means nothing to anyone other than the searcher. Having said that, I do like reading those bad boys.

Here are some of my favourites.

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Tagged as amanda fucking palmer, babysitting, bat humour, coherence, dr dre, jabberwocky, jackkerouac, lewiscarroll, pea soup, search terms, tiara cowboyhat, wordpress stats

September 23, 2011 · 11:30 am

Trenton Lee Stewart Interview

Trenton Lee Stewart is the American author of The Mysterious Benedict Society, which is the sort of book a library assistant might recommend to young persons who like warm humour, adventures, puzzles and fun. I asked him if he would do an interview with me by email, and he said yes. So here it is.

Can you sum up The Mysterious Benedict Society books for people who haven’t read them?

After passing a series of mysterious tests, a diversely talented group of four children are recruited by a benevolent genius named Mr. Benedict to go on an important mission. The first book is about that mission and the children’s developing relationships; the second and third are continuations of the Society’s adventures.

I read in one interview with you that the editing process for The Mysterious Benedict Society was quite arduous – was it the same for the other books in the series or did it get easier?

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Tagged as author interview, ebooks, lemony snicket, libraries, littlerock, morse code, mysterious benedict society, traditional print, trentonleestewart, williamboyd, writing for children