Mute…
One of the hardest characters I have written so far is Nicholas, one of the joint protagonists of The Shifu Cloth, because Nicholas is disabled.
It seems odd to have a Red Chair feature so soon after that brilliant last, but I could not ignore the chance of talking to a favourite and highly successful author as he prepares to release his new book.
Whilst away last weekend, I read an interesting article on solitude in The Australian Weekender magazine, by writer Nikki Gemmell. She says: ‘aloneness can have a vast restorative power … it’s a space for your mind to uncurl … in the lovely, glittery alone, a door opens to a possibility and it’s when novel ideas sneak in, titles roar with their rightness and surprising character arcs veer me back to excitement over a project that hasn’t been singing.’
I’m a fiction writer. Till this point in my life, I have written fantasy based on myth and legend. Two years ago however, I decided to write a historical fiction based around the legendary Sir Guy of Gisborne from the Robin Hood saga. Those who know of the book and who are followers of this blog will know it derived in part from watching the BBC’s Robin Hood series.
I am prompted to write on envy because I look at my daughter’s skin and wish mine was as smooth and unmarked, with far less cartographic detail of my life’s journey. Sometimes I wonder if people look at that wrinkle and wonder at what vicissitude might have caused it. Or those freckles there and think ‘she spends far too much time in the sun.’ Because that is inevitably the kind of thing that I muse upon when I look at someone’s face or hands. What caused that? What happened there?
Or should that be a writer’s average day? Ah, take it anyway you like, it doesn’t matter!
But a week or so ago, I was surfing the net and remember glancing at a post that relayed the average glamorous writer’s day and then listed their own by comparison. Can’t find where I read it (when do you ever manage to re-locate something you read some time ago unless you immediately bookmark it?) and as I raced around the sheepyards this week, I wondered about my own average day.
I’ve never really wanted to get into the mainstream vs indie argument that has waxed and waned over the Net for the last couple of years. To me all writers are just that – writers.
How they are published is immaterial. What matters is if either have readers and if they can entertain. But this is Read an E-Book Week and somehow it seems appropriate.
What is a villain?
If one looks up #904 ‘villain’ in Roget’s Thesaurus, it will list a plethora of alternate names ranging from ‘malefactor’ through ‘snake in the grass’ and ‘rogue’ to ‘knave’ and ‘cutthroat’ and many more besides.The word derives from the 1300’s from the term villein from the Anglo-French http://bit.ly/yPB6uF No doubt the upheavals of the peasantry during the Middle ages created a far more sinister meaning to the word.
Light can mean so many things.
In this tiny cottage, we are lit by the full face of the sun in summer and winter. The original owner was English and he and his wife had lived in Sweden and had an intrinsic understanding of the value of light in life. Thus this little house has masses of windows facing north… and just in case there was the slightest chance the sun thought it could escape lighting the house at any point, there are windows facing the morning east and the dusk west.
Donna Fasano is a fellow Indie Chick who has been what I craved to be for a long while. A successful mainstream writer. She wrote for Harlequin Books for 20 years before becoming a proud Independent Author. She’s written over 30 romance and women’s fiction novels that have sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide. Her books have won awards and made best-seller lists.