© Misty Richmond

Michelle, talk us through your daily writing routine.

I usually write for a few hours in the morning after dropping my son off at school. Because my work generally requires a good deal of research, my writing time frequently gets hijacked mid-process because I need to stop to look something up, or email someone a question, or call to find out if I can visit a certain location (shadow a doctor at the VA, tour a coffee roasting company, etc.). The answers often lead me down a long and winding path. While the unexpected paths I find myself following almost always make the writing of a book take longer than I’d planned, they also make the books a great deal more fun to write. Theoretically, I think it would be far more efficient to unplug the modem and write for 5 hours straight with no breaks, but, alas, the older I get, the more easily I get distracted.

Do you write with a particular demographic in mind?

I don’t generally think of a particular demographic. I leave that to my publisher–who makes all of the decisions about how to market a book and whom to target with the jacket art, cover copy, and advertising. But if I had to identify my “ideal reader,” the person I hope my books reach, it would be someone who wants to be entertained, but who is just as interested in characterization and the mood of a book as he or she is in plot. I guess I write for the “patient reader,” someone who’s okay with learning a little bit about memory (The Year of Fog), or math (No One You Know), or the Three Gorges Dam (Dream of the Blue Room), while following the main character on her journey.

Click Here to Read the Entire Interview

Leave a Comment

Narrative can be flat and as boring as a laundry list, or use many pieces of the scene to draw a word picture.  The technique of painting a picture with words involves making it dimensional by using sounds, aromas, climate, emotions. That way, rather than a cardboard cutout, it gives the reader a full image of the scene as it moves the story along.

This series will explore the use of words to make characters and places come alive. It truly is an art. A little too much and it sounds overblown and unrealistic. Or perhaps the “picture” is so full of unnecessary adjectives, that the reader has no real feeling for the picture the author is trying to create. Too little, and it misses the mark.

So, let’s see what it takes to draw a picture with words through examples:

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment

You might be one of those people who has written one or two books but no matter how hard you try you cannot find a good publisher or agent to represent you. Xlibris Book Publishers have come to the help of such people who want to have their books published. This Print on Demand (POD) company was created by authors, for authors. They give you freedom to write and edit the books the way you want without having to worry about whether or not it will be published.

Xlibris takes on the task of designing the interiors and cover. They also offer a copyediting service to polish your manuscript, as well as additional services such as marketing. After all this is done, Xlibris will list your book with different online stores and popular distributors.

Your book will be printed according to the demand of buyers. You receive royalties on each and every sale of your book.  What truly sets Xlibris apart is that they are non-exclusive, which means you can self-publish with them and still offer your work to agents and publishers. You retain control of your work.

Click Here to Read the Entire Review

Leave a Comment

What is poetry?

Poetry is an art form in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader’s or listener’s mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used. Because of its nature of emphasizing linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is notoriously difficult to translate from one language into another.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment

One of the lines commonly heard at writing seminars, critique groups and workshops is “Sometimes you have to kill your babies.” Often that is met by a collective, “What? I could never do that.” Babies refers not to cuddly little munchkins, but the parts of your manuscript that you love. The words that will make you immortal.

Okay, maybe that’s taking it a little too far, but most published authors know that at some time they had to cut at least one thing they loved. The possibility always exists that it might fit in a different story, book or article, but it definitely didn’t belong where it was.

I was no exception, digging my heels in when it came to cutting prose that made my heart sing. That is until l I attended a workshop called “The Machete Edit.” I listened in shock as the presenter prompted avid listeners to do just what none of us wanted to do. Swing the red pencil just like a machete. Tighten the vise. Unfortunately many authors and writers don’t realize what sound advice this is.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment

Perpetual Prose would like to welcome Andrewj on board as our new poetry blogger.

There’s actually an odd correlation between these ideas: poetry is either inadequate, even immoral, in the face of human suffering, or it’s unprofitable, hence useless. Either way, poets are advised to hang our heads or fold our tents. Yet in fact, throughout the world, transfusions of poetic language can and do quite literally keep bodies and souls together – and more.

In “The Defence of Poetry” 1821, Shelley claimed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. This has been taken to suggest that simply by virtue of composing verse, poets exert some exemplary moral power – in a vague unthreatening way. In fact, in his earlier political essay, “A Philosophic View of Reform,” Shelley had written that “Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged” etc.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment

There is nothing more boring to read than a scene with no oomph. Can you feel the surroundings, does your heartbeat skip right along with that of the  victim or the woman in love? Or have you created a set of paper dolls in a cardboard house?

If you can’t feel the scene, it’s a sure bet that your readers can’t. So, what to do?

Start with thinking about the cover. Authors don’t have a lot of control over this aspect of a published book, because it’s in the hands of the publisher and/or art director. Still, the cover is what communicates the wonders that are sandwiched between the front and back. Providing a concise synopsis and some physical descriptions help the artist to communicate with the reader.

For example, if it’s a funny book, does the cover say funny, or does it portray something entirely different. The cover is a big help in setting the scene. Although big name authors’ books will sell on the strength of their name alone, a compelling cover is invaluable for mid and small list authors.

It certainly doesn’t stop at the cover. When creating scenes, frame a mental picture that includes surroundings, how the person sees it from their own point of view, mental reactions, weather, clothing…anything that helps flesh out the scene as though you are the production designer for a movie. That doesn’t mean to describe everything in minute detail, but put yourself in that person’s head. Picture being in those surroundings before writing.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment

Roger, what did it take for you to get your break as an author?

I was just bloody-minded!  I started writing on November 4th 1987, and between then and July 17th 1993 I wrote something every day except for three days when I was going through a divorce.  I completed twenty two novels in that time, something in the region of three and a half million words, and at different times I was in discussion with a couple of agents, with one or two publishing companies, but nothing ever really got as far as I would have liked.  I wrote first of all in longhand, and then I got a typewriter, and finally ended up with an Amstrad dedicated wordprocessor that took about half an hour to warm up!

I spent those six years sending material out to British publishers, and received about five hundred  complimentary, very polite ‘Thanks but no thanks’ letters.  I also have two lever arch files with something in the region of three or four hundred straightforward format rejection slips.  This is just from companies that didn’t even look at the material I sent them.  I understand the sheer volume of work that a handful of people have to wade through in a publishing house.  People have given me figures on just how many unsolicited scripts come to the major publishing houses each week, and that figure is astounding.  My belief was that if I just kept on going I would eventually find the right person in the right company at the right time.  I had this datum from Disraeli who said ‘Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose’.  However, after six years of doing this I finally thought ‘Enough’s enough’, and I stopped writing.

I then studied music, photography, all manner of things, and didn’t go back to writing until the latter part of 2001.  It was then that I wrote ‘Candlemoth’.  I sent that to thirty-six publishers, thirty-five of whom sent it back.  All except Bloomsbury, and an editor there gave it to a friend who gave it to a friend, and it wound up at Orion with my current editor, and we have now worked together through eight books.  Since Orion signed me there have been a couple of comments made by a couple of publishers I have met about how they should perhaps have pursued things with a little more tenacity back in the early days.  The earlier unpublished stuff will probably stay right where it is in the loft.  It was a different genre, more supernatural in a way, and I write better now anyway.  I think the time away from it between 1993 and 2001 made me more succinct, gave me a greater clarity about what I wanted to say.  I have gone back recently and read some of my earlier work and it was a little verbose.  But hell, it was good practice!

Click Here to Read the Entire Interview

Leave a Comment

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, outside forces are at work draining your creative spirit. After all, how can you write a romance scene when the toilet is overflowing and the water is lapping at your ankles? Or the air conditioning is broken and the temperature outside passed one hundred hours ago?

Don’t despair. There are some things that might work. Not guaranteed, of course, but what’s the harm in trying?

• Keep moving toward the goal regardless of how you feel. If you think you have to be in a great mood to be creative, you might be in the wrong field. Achievement shouldn’t depend upon how you feel, although it often does. Picture this: You’ve got a terrible cough, your nose is running and you’ve got
  the shakes. Time to call the doctor. If he or she has to feel good to tend to you, what would happen if an argument with a spouse or office worker made doc feel bad that day? Would the receptionist refuse to take appointments? I think not. Turn the negatives into positives. It might be the time to use your emotions to write an angry or sad scene or short story.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

Leave a Comment