Sitting here typing away, creating a new character, and then the question hits you “What do you call protagonist THX 1138?”

I’m sure that there are proven methodologies used by the great the good and the very clever – complex algorithms that take innumerable social economic and cultural factors into consideration – and I’m sure people do that. 

I don’t.

New character. 

Government lackey, secret service kind of bloke. 

Needs a name.

Look over my right shoulder, sees a book, opens it, finds the first name, likes the name, uses it.   

Johnathon Lilburne a character following in the path already well established by Thomas Payne. 

Mister Lilburne was a Leveller of some repute, an interesting man, a name that deserved resurrection, a man not as instantly recognisable as our pamphleteer Pain(e), but one who deserved to be.   

But then I suppose we do have the locksmith come contract killer mister Wilbur Smyth, a nod to the literary giant that is indeed Wilbur Smith who must be my most recognisable name..? 

Nod given.

And when you start looking, and when you notice it, I tip my hat to innumerable characters, works of fiction, songs and poems. 

If you like the band New Model Army, the poems of Shelly and Byron, references abound.

I am that transparent. 

Flip even the hotelier, the charming suntanned Freddie is a tip to my favourite artist John Fredrick Lewis and his superb painting Lilium Auratum  displayed  (free to view) at Birmingham Art Gallery in their Pre Raphaelite section – worth an hour or so of your time.   

Anyway, our Leveller, our incarnation of John Lilburne is a agent for a department that does and indeed doesn’t exist, and he has an offer that Amy just cannot refuse – I think you’ll like it!

Oh, the book over my right shoulder “The Leveller Revolution by John Rees”. 

And yes THX1138 is a nod to a film of the same name.

We have, we think, cracked the enigma that is the one page (spoiler included) synopsis! 

Kudos to us!

In doing so we have learnt a valuable lesson, which like all truly important life lessons is blatantly self-evident after the fact.   

Yes, less is indeed more. 

You can summarise without feeling that you’ve missed everything of importance, a synopsis is indeed what it says on the tin – a summary, nothing more and indeed nothing less. 

Yet this has plagued me for longer than I care to admit.

I have struggled with what to include in my summary, what detail is needed, and indeed I have agonised about what detail to omit – omissions that if not included won’t/don’t  detract from the pithy one page ‘hook’ that you are attempting to create.

So, allusive one page document for Volume #1 and the tale of what happened when young Amy met Thomas Payne in hand what do we do now?

Now…

Now we put some genuine focused effort into a fishing trip that has thus far been unsuccessful, we project some of the confidence we have in our project into applications to (hopefully) receptive agents. 

Who will read and enjoy Amy Grace?

Our tale that is a fast paced “chase movie” set during 1884 in a world of HG Wells, Jules Verne and the Imperial British Empire.  Whatever it is, this tale isn’t a light-hearted tiptoe through the daffodils; it is an uncompromising tale about a rape committed upon a young woman; it is the tale of her struggles towards recovery, and the consuming and hollow nature of vengeance.    

So pitching our book I think that those who enjoyed books such as Child 44, the Millennium trilogy (Dragon Tattoo) or indeed those who enjoy the Song of Ice and Fire series of books will enjoy this story (and subsequent volumes).

So, hook suitably baited, off we go fishing.

 

 

28 minds, wordsmiths all, sat in a room detailing their journeys, their struggles, and amidst all these creative minds little old me. 

A cornucopia of imagination, and in their midst the interloping eater of fish finger sandwiches. 

I sat listening, absorbing, cogitating and generally pondering my place, my right to sit at the same table. 

I’m not a playwright, thespian, or published writer of any description, my only claim to comparative fame is that I occasionally read the Guardian newspaper… 

But, let us not imagine it was an unwelcome gathering, it wasn’t. 

The energy of imagination is contagious, the (near) peer exchanges invaluable. 

Folk writing books about walking tours around London, a very helpful contributor writing about the physical and spiritual aspect of pilgrimage. 

Eclectic, definitely!

What did I learn?

What was my main take-away?

Belief. 

Belief is all. 

Seek and accept feedback, relish it, bathe in the review of your work, but no matter how critical or supportive, remember that it is YOUR work and yours alone.

So, if necessary adjust, but never retreat, never stop.

Type away, tell your own tall tale, because if you don’t no one else will.

Thank you, London you were inspiring. 

 

 

It had to happen, and indeed it has. 

We’ve achieved our first bloodbath. 

The body count has just rang to the tune of six.

The pressure that was building, it’s now been released, and in doing so Amy has removed some very bad people from circulation.

So far we’ve had some near misses, some nasty  violent incidents, but today we’ve encountered out first release of Badb and the flapping of the carrion crows. 

Now six bodies lie where once they breathed walked and talked, but let us not weep for these who we have now killed. 

Rest assured they were indeed very bad people, who in the context of the story suffered their just deserts – do not mourn for their passing, it’s not needed.

Amy is in Gotham (New York) seeking to rescue Trua, trying to find a tiny pregnant fairy in a seething city of people, and buildings that reach up to the sky. 

Let us not assume that our pregnant woman is merely a passive victim unable or incapable at directing their own future – because she isn’t a mere sideshow curiosity.

Trua is also a strong (tiny) woman in command of her own destiny, as too is Charlotte

Of Charlotte more is to follow…

So, we’ve exorcised a particular demon, became as Lady Macbeth in a blood splattered hallway – the wallpaper forever ruined – and now we move on.

More will follow, more deaths, as sure as day follows night, we will shoot, stab, chop and use whatever means we have at our disposal to terminate with extreme prejudice some more very bad people and their enablers.

The Amy Grace Adventures Volume 3 Gotham are progressing nicely, thank you very much for asking.

 

Rip it up and start again…

Lyrics from a song? 

You know, I think indeed they are!

These words also reflect what’s been going on with Amy and book #3. 

We were so far in front, progress was good, all was confident and cock-a-hoop and as it should be, and then somehow an idea created itself, and this niggling thought said why don’t you change a few things? 

What was the possible harm in listening to whispered suggestion echoing around my subconscious asking why don’t you change a few things 180?

Yeah why not rip it up and start again? 

So, being the fool that we are, we listened, and we did as we were bid.

We changed victim to victor, beaten to beater, dominator to submissive, and the whole hue of the book changed. 

All the effort was poured into just two characters; just two incidents were changed. 

Two characters and two unrelated incidents were changed, and I think Gotham is now all the better for it.

We sit here reviewing the results of our labours, inevitably we ask ourselves why so obvious a thing took so long and took so much effort? 

The answer on time and effort I cannot fully answer, but for the result I can confidently state that it was most definitely worth it! 

 

De La Soul would have you believe that 3 is the magic number, but they and Aleister Crowley are wrong.

10,000 is THE magic number!

It is the milestone that counts, the progress marker from which all others hang.

It is the point, when reached, that allows you to relax a little as the story now has a beginning, has structure and the genesis of the plot etched onto the computer screen.

The blinking cursor now transformed into an impatient friend, no longer a tormenting Audrey loudly screaming “Feed Me Seymour Feed Me!”

10,000 words safely extracted from your chaos of your head, from which the impatient imagination that is thousands more words further down the line can now try to structure a joined flowing narrative.

A collection of phrases, fights, demons and blood splattered saloons all now have purpose, all now have space to tell their tales – and that is liberating. 

The first 10,000 take forever, the next 10,000 are impatient words released from the pressurised confine that now flow faster and faster from cortex to keyboard. 

Plots will flow, will expand, be titivated, be nudged to an acceptable and readable form, and some will be abandoned before after or during this process, but, it is the first 10,000 words that count.

A foundation is now complete.

Amy Grace of County Leitrim, by way of Cairo, Khartoum, Peshawar the North West Frontier and so many other places after these, is safely in New York – and nobody has died. 

Although so is Ebenezer Cochran – so, hey let’s not discount a reasonable body count just yet!

2.5 stars out of 5.

And we plod on, inexorably forward, progress maintained by accepting any motion as positive. 

It is indeed beyond a truism that glaciers move quicker across continents than I progress towards becoming a published author. 

But drip, drip, drip, we perceiver. 

We carry the nervousness of the second album as the dead dog across our shoulders – maybe it’s just a slow burn, maybe it’s one of those read twice to appreciate kind of books? 

Or, indeed possibly, just maybe, it’s not just ahead of the readership curve, possibly, maybe, it’s just not any good? 

Can you throw so many ideas into a mix and expect them all to work? 

Does one idea detract and distract from the other? 

I’m not too sure.

Doubt sits on my shoulder.

Maybe it’s a misunderstood classic? 

Maybe indeed I should just let it go, move on, have confidence in what I’ve written, and stop looking for applause that’s just not going to come?

Do I need the echo chamber validation?

But standing in the arena, with dust on my shoes, I do look up into the sea of watching faces and focus on the direction of the pointing thumbs.

Standing at the top of the ten-meter board, looking across the sharp concrete edge, the water has never looked further away. 

Tempting, but terrifying.

Unperturbed we move Amy through additional adventures in the young city of New York.  We seek allies, and we vanquish enemies while trying desperately to save our friends.

Echoes from the chasing pack are growing louder, the Latimer siblings are moving to remove the embarrassing annoyance of the woman with red hair, and that woman is…  well you’ll have to read the book to find out just what she is doing.

But, it is a less complex intertwined story than Magic, a tale that sticks to the relative simplicity of the debut.

Album three continues like its predecessors as a no holds barred, unforgiving, harsh, and at times unbelievably cruel, venture into the dark underbelly of life. 

We have Pinkerton Agents, opiate smugglers and the whiff of requited love in the air for our heroine.   

As for the curtains, yeah they’re blue as an echo of the plight of the impoverished victims of global tyranny – shhsh it’s kinda obvious… 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well the first one is always the easiest, for debutants the critics are generally more sympathetic. Idiosyncratic structure accepted as ‘style’, unique phrasing lauded as refreshing, the darkness of the story enjoyed as something genuinely different, something challenging.

And then comes the sequel, the second album, the sophomore effort, the attempted follow on to the well-received debut.

You cannot simply regurgitate the first album, rephrase the same chords, you need to expand your sound, stretch your style – experiment a little.

Hmmmm

Reviews are kind, but the second album isn’t viewed in its own merit, it cannot be, it is the sibling to the successful and enjoyed older and established child. Some so loved the original that any variation is a betrayal, some uneasy with the continued violence, and some, a precious few, enjoying the continued ride.

It’s different… but Darks Side of the Moon, part two, it is not!

While Magic is a direct follow on to Thomas Payne, it is a development of the story, a growth of the character from events that have been. Thomas ends, it has a purpose which it delivers. Magic tidy’s up the deliberate lose ends, but then has to move on, has to travel both with Amy and the reader to somewhere new, to something else.

Magic; fairies; satanic ritual sacrifice; sadistic abuse and the loss of love – a romp through the flowers Magic is most definitely not, but then again neither was Thomas Payne.

I take the critique, accept the valued opinion which I purposely sought, and sit now elbows deep in Gotham, aware of what was loved, what was less enjoyed, and hopeful that this will deliver a blend that satisfies me, satisfies the story, and hopefully something that satisfies the reader.

We live in hope.

 

 

 

So, you write, you finish, you send for review and then you patiently wait for responses. 

But what do you do next? 

While the critiques are deliberating over your latest submission, what do you do?

Hmmm – I’ve opted to read, to research and to cogitate.

We have moved away from Amy and her plight, and stepped into being on the losing side during a civil war.

We’ve taken as our backdrop the Irish civil war, the chaos murder and vengeance that swirled around a country in the midst of painful change.

We are scribbling ideas around “The Big House”, and importantly we are enjoying it.

The changes that happened during this period of time in Ireland were profound, and arguably echo with us still. 

People moved from being highly respected members of society, some were honoured as heroes, yet in the near blink of an eye, they became pariahs subject to ostracization, boycott and murder.

Some used the overarching conflict between the two states to settle resentment that was a deep and dark as the bog and turf on which they stood, some fabricated grudges to pursue nothing more than spiteful resentment. 

And some just liked the chaos and the opportunity to be bad!

“The Big House” is a tale of a discovered past, of secrets that had been hidden for a long time, and the pain that their uncovering brings.

Oh, and the job, it’s still an open vacancy for the right candidate!

TellingTallTales.com are excited to offer the opportunity to appoint a suitably dynamic Literary Agent to represent a promising unpublished author. 

Additional information about the author, completed novels, works in progress and contact details can be located at TellingTallTales.com

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