Pubawrimo

The Wolf's Footprint paperback

Here I am again - and what have I been doing?

Well, I've been at the self-publishing again. Last year I responded to teachers who emailing me, asking for copies of my OOP book, The Wolf's Footprint. So I reprinted it, as an ebook and as a paperback - and found that the paperback sold more than the ebook.

The obvious lesson to be drawn from this seemed to be - self-publish more paperbacks with CreateSpace. So I've now made all of the Ghost World Sequence - The Ghost Drum, Ghost Song and Ghost Dance available in paperback. And they're selling - as with The Wolf's Footprint - better than the ebooks.

The Ghost Drum

So last week, I worked on Nightcomers, one of my ghost story collections, which contains, I think, some of my best short stories. 'Beautiful' for instance, set in an eerie, after-hours shopping mall, and 'Cold Silver.' I sent it off to Amazon to be approved, and hope that it will soon be available as a paperback.

But I'm also working on a book, as yet unfinished, with the working title of 'Bad Girl.' And she is very, very bad - horrid, indeed - and unlike the girl in the rhyme, she is never really good.

The writing of it was stuck. I knew what had to happen next. The book has multiple view-points, and I knew whose view-point I wanted to take, and I knew more or less what I wanted them to say...But the two or three attempts I made at the chapter were just wrong. It made the points I wanted to make. It covered the ground. It was just flat, dull - wrong.

I tried starting at another point, but it still didn't work. I decided that I needed to jump over some of the dull detail - there was a bit of a list of stuff the character had to get done. Okay, ditch that, get on with the action, and hope the list can be fitted in later... Nah, it still wouldn't work.

As it happens, I have a friend who is also writing a book, and was also stuck. Hadn't written anything for a month. He counted the days. I was feeling pretty thwarted myself, and so suggested we should have a 'pubowrimo.'

Karen's lovely book

Most people will have heard of the famous Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month, where writers pledge to write a whole novel in the month of November. And the other day, Karen Bush, on Authors Electric wrote about 'Linowrimo' - about how a group of writers, in touch via email, pledge to write a number of words every day, and report on how they got on.

I'm a member of this group too, and, like Karen, find it a constant source of encouragement and help - but it couldn't  help me sort out the Bad Girl.

Like many other writers, I've often found that, when I can't write at home, I can write pages and pages in a cafe - or on a CallyMac ferry, or on top of a Scottish mountain, in a Loughborough B&B - in fact, anywhere that's not home.

So I suggested to my friend that we take ourselves off to a pub we both like, and see if we could write there. We agreed that we would buy a drink - rent for our office space - but then write for at least an hour before we talked. My friend agreed. He wasn't sure that it would work, but was so keen to get going on his novel again that it was worth trying.

Dear Readers, it worked. I had thought of taking my laptop, but at the last minute decided to take a pile of scrap paper instead, and a favourite scribbly pen (that is, one that floats easily over the paper.) The more complete a change, the better, I thought - pen and paper in the pub instead of a computer at home.

And even while driving there, it started to work. Why, I wondered, did it have to be that POV? Why not try coming at it through another of the characters?
 

A great writing aid.

We reached the pub and found our table. My friend bought a pint of cider for himself and a half for me, and we started. The moment I sat down, the words came. Within a few moments, I'd largely forgotten where I was, or that my friend was with me. The landlady, at one point, came round to ask if anyone had a silver honda in the car-park. I floated up out of a dream, said, "No, not me," and drifted off into writing-world again.

Every now and again, I'd pause to think of a word, or to take a sip of cider and would think - with mild surprise - 'Oh, yes, that's right, I'm in the pub - and oh, yes, that lowered head and scribbling pen over there, that's my friend...' And then I'd lower my own head and start scribbling again.
 
I filled page after page - 2000 words. I'm past the part that held me up for so long. Now I'm up against another problem, with another character - but that's okay. Writing a book is just one problem after another.

And my friend? He was very happy with the experiment too. He wrote 882 words - which, he says, is a lot for him at one time. He, too, feels he's made real progress, and asked, "When shall we do it again?" So the landlady may have to get used to two word-dazed people scribbling at her tables.

Why does it work? For me, I think the change is important, though I don't quite understand why. The change of scene, the change from computer to paper - it all seems to shake up my ideas, to loosen or free something.

My friend says that he knew what he had to write, but was procrastinating, feeling that he wasn't quite ready - that he'd think about it some more before beginning. But the days went by and he never did begin. The special outing, and the solemn vow to write for an hour before talking, made him commit to writing then and there, instead of putting it off. The time set, of an hour, made him keep writing, too, when he would normally have stopped.

So, if the writing's not happening - get out of the house!

REVAMPING VAPID VAMPIRES - AND BLOT

FIREBRAND by Gillian Philip

          I love stories that mix ancient and modern, like Gillian Philips’ FIREBRAND and its sequel, BLOODSTONE, which mix an ancient Celtic ‘faeryland’ (warlike and violent as those ancient faeries were) and the present day.

          My own The Sterkarm Handshake and A Sterkarm Kiss have 21^st century business executives travelling back, in a time-machine, to attempt to do business with 16^th Century Border Reivers – and in my Odin’s Voice books, colonists on Mars worship the ancient Norse Gods.

ODIN'S VOICE by Susan Price

          Because these ancient stories don’t go away.  They’re part of our thinking, and we keep retelling them.  Technologically, we’re a huge distance from the Bronze Age, but we use our technology to tell the tale of Troy again.  We reinvent Robin Hood; we reinvent vampires and werewolves.

          I’m not against this reinvention.  When a story stops being retold, it dies.  But sometimes the reinvention moves too far from the original, and becomes vapid.  Then it needs to return to its root and draw new strength.

          I think vampires have become vapid.  Originally, the idea of the vampire stemmed from a fear that the jealous, malevolent dead would feed on the living. 

          Later, sexuality, and a fear of it, were stirred into the mix; together with a terror of losing your immortal soul and being condemned, forever, to Hell, or to a Hellish existence.  Pretty potent stuff.

          But Science, and weakening religious faith, have drained away the fear of Hell-fire; and as the Western World is more tolerant of sexuality, and less fearful of it, so the penetration of a vampire’s fangs has lost much of its charge.  And much as we may love ghost stories, few of us today seriously fear that our dead will attempt to drag us into the grave.

          So what’s left?  An Undead Raver, sighing with ennui.  Swoony vampires who don’t titillate anyone much except young teenage girls.  The Vampire Legend has worn tissue thin.

           So it may be time to take a fresh look at some of the original, old vampire legends, to find firmer ground to build our modern stories on.  Some of the old village tales, for instance, where people feared to go near the graveyard at night, because the recently deceased cobbler sits there on his grave, stitching boots.  And villagers are falling sick, with holes in their heels that seem made by a cobbler’s awl…

Photo: Die Booth

          It’s this need not to forget the old, vital tales, that makes me like RE-VAMP. It’s a site for people who love the old stories – the old-style vampires, ghosts, monsters.  Again, mixing old and new, you find it on the internet.  I love this mix of old stories and new technology.

     Re-Vamp was started by two writers, the UK’s Die Booth, and  the USA’s LC Hu.  They ‘met’ in an on-line writing community, and struck up a friendship based on their shared love for horror stories, especially those with roots in folk-tale

          They discussed their stories by e-mail and edited each others’ work; and discovered that both of them disliked ‘modern horror cliches’.  To quote Die Booth: “It struck us as horrifying that a sulking, immortal hottie seems to be what a vampire IS to people these days. The same goes for all the other traditional 'monsters'.”

          They wanted to collaborate on a project and decided, again in Die Booth’s words, that: "What we really wanted to do was to get away from the established horror cliches and either resurrect the original myths or create something completely new and imaginative; to prove that shock tactics and gore don't automatically equal frightening; to reclaim the genre a bit.”

          At first they planned an anthology of their own stories, but then decided that, “it would be much more fun and engaging to allow people to interact with the project, so we've published commissioned stories and artwork from various contributors as well as including as many polls and contests as we can, to encourage readers to take part.

          “The project, launched on Halloween 2010 will wrap up on Halloween 2011
and then we will have 'the best of Re-Vamp' anthology available to buy in PDF or print, with lots of stories (and hopefully artwork if we ascertain it will print OK) from the project and some as-yet-unpublished material as well.”

          And what has made possible this sharing of stories and art across the world, this revitalisation of ancient stories?  The internet!  I love it!

           I love RE-VAMP too.  I dip in and out of it, reading a story here and there, and always find good ones.  It’s a pleasure to be able to spread the word, and perhaps send a few other lovers of old-style horror RE-VAMP’s way.

Susan Price's website is here

Learn about how UK Authors are self-publishing at Kindle Authors UK

And after all that talk of the undead and horror, here's Blott -