One of The World's Tiniest Book Launches in One of The World's Tiniest Cocktail Bars.

#StartSmallDreamBig

I'm heading off to UTOPiA in a month and having been nominated for a couple of awards for my book 'When Sorrows Come' and my series, 'Beautiful Freaks', I was feeling under increased pressure to find a drop-dead gorgeous evening gown (not that I need any encouragement, I love evening dresses) 

However, several weeks later and having tried on over 40 different dresses, every single one somehow wasn't right - either that or it looked pretty much the same as one of the 5 I have already hanging in my wardrobe. 

I was sat having a coffee, feeling a little deflated when I got to thinking that £200 / $300 was a hell of a lot of money for a dress I was going to wear just a handful of times. I began to think of ways that I could perhaps spend that money more wisely on attaining my life-plan. 

Coincidentally, the very next day, we stopped off at a new shop that had opened in my home town. It is the HQ office of a cocktail hamper company, founded by an interesting female entrepreneur. She wanted to create an office that was a joy to work in rather than the industrial unit office she had currently been renting. She chose one of the cute little Victorian fronted shops that had once been a florists, and now, as well as having a pretty office, she opens up the front of it as a tiny miniature cocktail bar. 

EUREKA, I would take that £200 and hold a perfectly miniature book launch party / signing. The cocktail bar will take just about 10 people - the perfect number of people as one of my very first solo signings. 

Then, life is strange; there are several other creative projects happening in my life at the minute, and for some reason, they all seem to be connecting with one another. One of these projects is working with women in the local community who have turned their back on traditional, patriarchal corporate jobs and professions to pursue their own path, create their own companies, and to sell their own services. TAP (The Academy of Possible) has recently been established, and it's a social evolution project that aims to connect women with skills with one another, so we can become cheerleaders and supporters for each other, both on a very practical sales level, and on an emotional, motivational level. 

As part of these two strands of my life, I had the idea that I would use the miniature signing in the miniature cocktail bar to make a miniature documentary on the theme of #StartSmallDreamBig, with the aim of inspiring other people to take that first step into doing something bold, social and extraordinary.

I'm not going to lie, the thought of a signing, where I will be reading, petrifies me. I'm still coming to terms with my identity as an author - which by 8 books down, I should have nailed already. And yet, there are reasons why I am 8 books down and never done a social launch party for one of my books... reasons that are complex and reasons that I know many others share. 

That's the aim of this project, to inspire folks to step outside of their comfort zones, but in a safe way - a bit like a controlled explosion, only just not with quite so much wreckage - although who knows what will happen with the added ingredient of cocktails. 

I'm being ultra brave, and fighting the fear by inviting a local journalist, the manager of a local national book store, and a high profile blogger to attend and be of the 10 guests that will be invited. I don't know if they will come, but I do know that if you don't ask, they definitely won't come. 

And if the filming is rubbish, if the reading is wobbly, if the whole thing is a little less than perfect, it doesn't matter, it will be perfectly imperfect and I will have learned a whole lot of lessons. 

Watch this space for more updates on this project, and I really look forward to hearing where you arrange your miniature signings having been inspired by this idea. 

Drop a reach out in the box <3 nbsp="" p="">

Serial Killer: The Complexities of Writing Serials.

So about a eighteen months ago, I had the great idea that I'd write a seven book series. I mean, after all how hard can that be? I'd completed the Knight Trilogy, and woefully suffered the grief of ending a series that I'd lived and breathed for nearly five years. It was around a third of the way through book three of the trilogy, 'Star Fire' that I really began to regret calling it the Knight TRILOGY. Yes, I could have gone all Star Wars and ignored the fact that trilogy normally means 3, but not me - I like things in numeric order or else I fear the universe might implode.

So seven books, right? I mean the original plan was that I would bash out at least two of the series in the first year in 50,000 word sized novels and then maybe three in the next. I'd given up the day job after all - what could be the problem?

Well the problem is that the first book, 'Witchcraft' ended up being 120,000 words of carefully crafted, edited and rewritten novel - oh and it took almost a year to write. The second problem was that I fell far too in love with the characters and the world that I had built to let myself just 'bang it out' without much care.

The second book, 'Vengeance' has come in at 100,000 words, and I'm more in love than ever. Even if nobody else ever reads it, I have created a story and characters that I am pleased to spend my days living with.

Now I am in the last few thousand words of Book Two and for  some reason, those last 3,000 words are my nemesis. I mean, it's all planned - of course - but some strange, almost supernatural force is stopping me from getting on with the damned thing.

So I stopped. I realised the reason I couldn't end it was because I wasn't absolutely sure of the details of Book 3, and by that I don't really mean plot; that kind of has a way of working its way out, but I wasn't entirely sure of all my characters' motivations, emotions and relationships. I needed to see the characters as their future selves so I could fully craft their present.

During the 6 hour round train trip from London to Paris and back again, armed with a lot of notepaper, a half bottle of champagne and a handful of hope, I plotted out the character development of Book Three, which allowed me the clarity I needed to do re-writes in Book 2 - when I've done those (Hopefully in some crazy two week binge of inspiration and creativity), I will write the epilogue.

You see, I'm a stickler for narrative details, and even more so for character development (building people is hard, both as a parent and as an author)  - and more importantly when it comes to sticklers, so are readers. Inconsistencies between books in a series are jarring and highly irritating, especially if like me, you consume a series in the space of a few days (weeks at most). This of course flags up any kind of plot or character horror that may have somehow occurred during the annals of time that it took the author to write the epic saga. 

Approaching it by creating a beautiful chaotic map of all that might happen, and more importantly why it might happen, has flagged up some serious but entirely fixable issues in the earlier part of Book 2 and I am so pleased that I have worked through them now rather than have to face them in a tangled mess of strings half way through the writing of Book Three. (There's a lot to be said about writing the whole series before pressing the publish button - but seven years is a long time not to eat!)

So, to all of you serial writers out there, I'm really interested to see how you approach the writing of a serial. Do you grow organically from one book to another? Or, do you plot out the whole epic saga on the back of a napkin? Or are you one of those gifted individuals where everything is worked out when your asleep, coming through as lucid dreams?

Drop a comment in the box and share x

12 Days of #CreepFest: Author Interview with Stant Litore

WELCOME:
Welcome to the 12 Days of Creepfest; a celebration of Christmas spooks and horror and an opportunity to introduce you to some wonderful horror and Dark Fairytale writers. Firstly thanks to the wonderful Rebecca Treadway (@creepywalker) for organising this fun trip.

Today I am happy to welcome the brilliant Stant Litore, author of the series The Zombie Bible.

INTERVIEW:
In 140 characters, describe your private self.
Will stop on a blizzard day to help someone whose car is busted. Have an incurable phobia of zombies, jellyfish, and Westboro Baptist Church.

In 140 characters, describe your writerly self.
Knives flashing in the dark. Sometimes you have to cut deep to find the real beating heart of the story.

Tell us more about your current work and projects?
You’re going to want to check out The Zombie Bible. It’s a series of biblical tales retold as episodes of humanity’s long struggle against hunger and the hungry dead. Not your parents’ Sunday School. These stories have teeth. And heart. The most recent novel is set in second-century Rome and it’s about a priest who can bring peace to the walking, ravenous dead. But Rome might burn him for it.

How do you like to bring the 'dark side' into Christmas?
I’ll be honest, Christmas is the one day of the year that my mind is not dwelling on horror. In Hamlet, the guards describe how all the ghosts and bogeymen go to sleep when the cock crows at dawn on Christmas day. It’s the day when peace and goodwill lies over the earth.
But I will say this; While we eat our Christmas dinners and spend time with family, in many parts of the world children are starving, women in remote villages are walking ten miles to fetch a bucket of clean water while other women in crowded cities – right here in our own country – are working strip clubs under duress because if they don’t, they’ll have the shit beat out of them. Still other people are watching their homes be burned, or are packing in a hurry to get out. The dark side of Christmas is that a whole lot of people are suffering, and most of us aren’t thinking about them or acting to see justice done. Most of us are just breathing a sigh of relief that we managed to buy so many things before they sold out; in many cases, these are things manufactured in sweat shops and slave factories on distant shores.
I think if we really want to talk about wishing a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, we should have a moment of silence somewhere in the day and resolve to do what we can to make one hell of a difference this next year. Even if we just make a big difference for one person. Because otherwise, our Christmas dinner is a dinner served on the backs of broken and enslaved people and on the beaten bones of children, and the beautiful truths we tell ourselves about the season start to become lies.

Describe your perfect fantasy Christmas day.
Now that is a happier question. I actually think I am going to skip over the first few hours of that perfect Christmas and not describe them at all, and as my beautiful wife would be intimately involved in those hours, I think she’d appreciate that. But later in the morning I would see my two girls opening gifts and playing together, and we would have family calling in or visiting in the afternoon, and a dinner with some glorious vegetarian options for my wife and the most delicious turkey or ham you can find, for me. There would be wine. There would be laughter. There would be pictures and old stories. Wouldn’t mind a bit of snow outside and warmth in the hearth. I suppose this sounds real lazy – someone interviewed on here is going to want to go sky-diving on Christmas Day, I just know it – but there it is. Just Christmas at home with the people who matter to me.

Which six famous figures (dead or alive) would you love to have sitting at your Christmas table?
Since it’s the Christmas table, I’d pick the famous people who knew how to party and how to laugh fit to shake the room. I’d want Hafiz there – I think he’d be belly-laughing over pretty much everything, and trying to get the rest of us to. I think Abe Lincoln, because I admire him and he really needed a break and some people to cheer him up, there toward the end. Think we might could do that; my family is a cheerful crew.

Let’s see, how many left, four? Anne McCaffrey. She’d be spinning yarns, and a Christmas dinner isn’t anything without a few good yarns. And, well, I miss her. How about Themistocles, the hero of the Persian Wars? Frankly, you need a veteran at the table. He’ll show off his scars, his voice will boom out when there’s a lull, he’ll belt out carols off-key, and he may well try to dominate the table, but we’ll enjoy having him there.

Also, I’m sure this is one of those ‘oh come on, you didn’t pick him’ answers, but let’s get the Rabbi Jesus there, too. We won’t run out of wine, and he always seemed to have just the right thing to say. And since I’ve got one left, Barack Obama. If you’ve seen the benefits dinners, you know. Man can tell a joke.

What are your New Year wishes?
I’d like to introduce a lot more people to The Zombie Bible. :) Seriously, though, I would really like to be a better father this year. I am acutely aware that my two daughters are growing fast, and I’m aware of how much of a man gets sunk into work and projects. My girls need me, and I don’t want to miss one moment with them.

Just for fun: TRIVIA
Bing Crosby or The Pogues?
Crosby for Christmas. But please give me some good Celtic music the next day.

Jolliness or Bah Humbug?
Jolliness. I’m not old and bitter yet. May I never be.

http://zombiebible.blogspot.com
http://zombiebible.blogspot.com