Girl meets boy – boy is psycho killer.
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Grendel – free download
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Text Transformation – free download
Free download: 29 August – 2 September
Click here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IP07J42
The Heaven Field – free download
St. Claire has given up the dealing and the one-night stands, he’s renounced violence, dropped out of sight and moved up the coast; he’s living like a hermit, trying to be a good man again.
Kaska lives in a hope-free, dead-end town where the only growth industries are teenage pregnancy and low-level street disorder. She’s sixteen, a gifted artist and she’s dying by inches. She’s desperate to break free.
But as both St. Claire and Kaska discover, life gets in the way of the best-laid escape plans.
FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD 24-28 August.
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Gun Jesus
September 2018 – Mark Barrett makes his return in the kinetic follow up to NQA:
NQA – free kindle download
15-19 June.
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Forgotten Love
DN1
I’ve completed a run through of DN1 – it happened quick, and mostly it’s gone fine, though I think there’s too much ‘drama’ and emotion right now – and now I have to go back and address the final two or three things that Jamie mentioned needed sorting.
Firstly, the move from street punk to dealer happens almost overnight, and it maybe needs some gradation, some extra tweak to make it interesting/believable.
Secondly Mickey’s explaining the source of heroin imports needs flattening out a bit, it’s a bit too pat. He comes across as a bit to clever. Would he really remember all that? Maybe education on drugs is a recurring thing in school, every school he’s ever been to do some sort of drugs awareness thing, so it’s one of the things that sticks in his mind. A ‘portable skill’ along with art, sport, and lots of random info on Diwali. Ramadam and Gurpurbs.
Maybe the Hamlet thing too. Maybe he gives that explanation because, after reading the Sparknotes and watching Thug Notes on Youtube, he realised that discussing the Bard’s motivation would be easier than actually reading the play.
books
Favourite books of all time:
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
structure
I don’t pay attention to the sort of narrative theories studied in university, I had them down as a french plot back when I was an undergraduate and life since then has only reinforced my first impressions. Neither do I pay attention to the how-to-write structures promoted by creative writing classes. My only responsibility is to the story, and only I know if I’ve done it right.
However, the best description I’ve ever come across for a universal narrative structure is this:
- Equilibrium
- Disequilibrium
- New equilibrium
And even then, I pay it no mind.
telling tales
Writing a story is a strange thing. From a few disparate events, from transient moments or an overheard name or phrase, I create characters and places and a brand new story which didn’t exist before I created it, and even in the creation is still being created, being moulded, being redrafted, until it reaches something like real.
It’s a leap of faith too: firstly and, to me, most importantly, that it will work. That is will be any good. Secondly that anyone will enjoy reading it.
And there’s a whole level of something approaching arrogance, or maybe blind faith if I want to be a bit charitable. Just the feeling, the inclination that I can do it. That I can make things up, that I can write thousands of words, and that they will work together to create a story.
But mainly writing is something I do because I am compelled to. I get up at five every morning, drive to a nearby MacDonalds, buy myself a coffee, and I write for two hours. I just write.
It’s how I make sense of the world.