Split City Waltz

Goodness, it’s been a while. Do pardon the dust in here, but I thought I’d stop by to make a quick post about a story of mine that’s being released tomorrow.

Split City Waltz is a short LGBTQ novella starring the rather conflicted private investigator Allyn Morgan. Capable, curious, flirtatious and practical, she’s a really fun character to write about, and hopefully to read about too!

She’s been hanging around inside my head for a while now, but to be honest, I just couldn’t find a world to put her in. Thankfully, an anthology call over at Less Than Three Press helped solve that problem.

Living in London was always fun, and I miss it in a lot of ways – the fast flow and constant noise. And one of the things that always struck me about being there was how divided it was between the waking hours and the darker ones. It was incredible watching as one part of society headed indoors while another slipped out into the evening light.

It was as though the whole vibe of the city changed, as the tourists made their way back to their temporary beds and the locals came out to play after a hard day’s graft.

This novella was very much inspired by the idea that a single city can have two very different sides. In this world, London is inhabited by two very different societies – one basking in the new technological advances being used above ground, and another taking refuge from it in the former underground network below.

There are two types of people in the world these days; ones who feel safe knowing someone’s watching them, and those who don’t.

Allyn couldn’t imagine a world without the chip that rests just underneath the skin of her right wrist, while a mysterious hacker named Terminal couldn’t think of anything worse. This story is about what happens when they’re forced to work together.

The London of tomorrow is a city that couldn’t care less what you do – as long as everyone can see you doing it.

It’s available from tomorrow from Less Than Three Press, Smashwords, All Romance and more!

Click here for an excerpt and links to reviews!

Another Way, Another Point of View

Another Point of View by Evey90, found here.

Rewriting short stories and switching between one point of view and another sometimes feels like interviewing narrators. Most are outsiders, wise and all-knowing like the teacher that read to you at the end of the school day. Some are the characters themselves, blinded by their own emotions and stumbling through a plot they have no clear vision of because they’re the ones driving it. Once in a while you may even open a book to discover you’re the one telling the tale as you read it, asked by an author to become a different person and experience events with all the insight of an amnesia suffer.

Serial Fiction (My Novel, Divided?)

It’s 1am, I’m looking at a project in Scrivener and I may be about to do something either crazy, brilliant or the fictional writing equivalent of publishing suicide. Funnily enough, it wouldn’t be the first career decision I’ve made in the middle of the night, and I hope it won’t be the last either – life’s dull enough as it is.

My Love Affair With Fiction

I’d love to say I started reading from an early age, with books being such an integral part of my childhood, I wouldn’t know where I’d be without them. But that isn’t entirely true. I have no fond memories of my parents reading me bedtime stories, though I am assured they did.

My first memory of being so drawn in to a fictional place that I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to come out wasn’t until I was thirteen or so. It was thanks to a friend I had made at secondary school called Helen. She brought me in a copy of The Pawn of Prophecy by David and Leigh Eddings. I’d never read a fantasy novel before, outside of the bog standard fairy tales and Disney stories. I wasn’t sure I’d like it, the words on the first page glared out of me, intimidating. It seemed impossible to read that much, the text so small and blanketed, barely split into paragraphs to my eyes. 

Imitation, Influence and Style

Do you still read while working on your own stories? I have been told more than once not to, it being easy to fall in love with someone else’s style and have it bleed, however unintentionally, into your own writing.

On the one hand, reading lots of other material is the best way to discover just how many different ways to write a story there are, and which one most suits you. On the other, there’s nothing quite as unsettling as realising that the reason you like a draft so much is because the voice isn’t so much your own, as the author whose novel you enjoyed reading the other night.

On the Subject of: My Imagination and Your Prose

Art by photographer Jeannette Woitzik, view her portfolio here.

My last bit of Occasional Whimsy was entirely dialogue based in its first draft and I prefered it that way. Only after it was workshopped by a few mates did I decide to take their advice and add in brief descriptions during the breaks in conversation. Sometimes it’s easy to tell I started out in Journalism, working on feature writing and interviews, rather than creative prose.

One First Step, One First Line

In Journalism, particularly in feature writing, it’s drilled into you how important the first line of your piece is. It’s meant to be factual, informative, compelling and interesting all at once. The headline should have done most of the work for you, leading the eye of the reader down to the first sentence of the text, but it’s the job of the first line to keep them there. Why should a reader, a person who has a lot of other stuff to do, give up some of their precious time for your writing?

It’s the same with creative prose. Short stories, poems, novels and scripts all need that first hook to capture the attention of their audience. There are lots of ways to do this, all tried and tested by authors far greater than me. The trick as a writer is to figure out which one suits your style and which one will give your creation the best first impression.

My Inner Critic’s name is Ben. We don’t get on.

I am in the zone. Words are flowing from my fingertips and into the world like sand spilling through an hourglass. My main character is rounding a corner in a bustling hyper market. Vendors call to him in a language he barely understands but he’s fixed and intent, his target mere seconds away. As he reaches inside his jacket pocket for a pistol he’s not even sure will work he spies her but, wait… she isn’t alone.

There’s tension and bright lights and I am nailing this scene. I can feel myself bouncing a little in my seat because this next part, this next part will be fantastic and-