Tagged: masq2
My Interview with Louise Turner
Louise Turner is the debut author of Fire & Sword, a thrilling historical novel set in 15th century Scotland that chronicles the life of John Sempill. Read on to see our discussion of why she suddenly decided to write a novel, how she kept track of her enormous cast of characters and her future plans.
1. Of all the times you could have set your novel, why Scotland in 15th century?
I’ve lived in the west of Scotland all my life, so when I first decided to start writing historical fiction, it seemed natural to look around me for inspiration. I suppose it was a sense of place that compelled me to write ‘Fire & Sword’; in particular, it was a fascination with two local historic monuments. The first of these was the Collegiate Church of Castle Semple near Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire, which was built at the behest of John, 1st Lord Sempill (plain ‘John Sempill of Ellestoun’ in ‘Fire and Sword’). The second was Duchal Castle, where a siege takes place towards the end of the book. Even though Duchal played a crucial role in events that had repercussions across Scotland, most people travel past it every day without even knowing that it’s there. Continue reading
Writing Pitfalls: Dialogue
I don’t claim to be a writer or even an expert on books in general, but I know what I like as a reader and what other people like to read in general. That’s why I’m writing this 10 part series to help writers, especially self-published writers, improve their writing.
I can’t tell you guys how many times I’ve wanted to throw my Kindle or my book at the wall because of bad dialogue. You could say I’m exaggerating but I’m being completely honest when I say that if your book has awesome characters, a fast-paced plot and solid world-building but has bad dialogue I will not be able to finish it. I have had to give up on more books than I care to admit because of wretched dialogue.
All of the mistakes with dialogue basically boil down to three main categories, which I’ll go into detail below.
Pitfall #1: Stiff dialogue.
Example: “Why hello Gerard! What a lovely day it is outside, is it not? I believe the chief meteorologist Jonathon Ziegelgansberger predicted a temperature of 90 degrees, which is 15 degrees above the seasonal average. In our little town of Cosmo our main industry is tourism, therefore I expect all of the businesses will see a 100% increase in sales this financial quarter.”
How to fix it:
I swear the example above is not an exaggeration of some of the dialogue I’ve read in books, both self-published and traditional. Dialogue is a tricky thing but the main problem I seem to see is that authors don’t read their dialogue aloud to themselves. They don’t consider whether the way they write is the way a person would actually speak in the real world. Authors: you need to make your dialogue flow naturally. I have two very simple tips below to help you:
1. Read it aloud to yourself. If you stumble over words or it sounds ridiculous to your ears, that’s a good hint that your dialogue is stiff.
2. Ask yourself if a person with the character’s socioeconomic status, upbringing, education level, etc. would speak that way in the real world.
These are some pretty simple steps to fixing stiff dialogue but very, very few authors even bother to do them and editors don’t seem to catch it. Continue reading
Book Blast: The Fallen by Lee French and Erik Kort
Publication Date: January 26, 2014Series: The Greatest Sin #1
Genre: Fantasy
Spirits
My 2014 Blogging Goals
I’m a little late on the blogging goals band wagon, seeing as most bloggers posted their goals early this month, but better late than never. One advantage of posting later is that I’ve had time to reflect on other peoples’ blogging goals and to see if I want to adopt some of them. So what exactly are my blogging goals this year?
1. Reach 1,000 followers. (WordPress and email combined.)
I started out the year with 633 followers and at the time of writing this post I have 687 followers. In 2013 I acquired 455 new followers so I’ll just have to stay on pace with my average of about a follower per day. So why do I want 1,000 followers? Why not 900 or some other high number?
Well, the answer is that on NetGalley most of the large publishers like Penguin are only accepting review requests from blogs with 1,000+ followers. Some of my favourite books are published through Penguin, so by reaching the 1,000 follower milestone I’ll be able to request them. It’s not guaranteed that I’ll be accepted, but with my really high reviews to requests accepted ratio it’s not going to hurt my chances.
2. Publish one well-researched article per month.
I’m not talking about my rants here. I’m talking about articles like The Portrayal of Cleopatra in Historical Fiction. In other words, articles that take a little more research and a little more thought than rants do. Besides, rants are spur-of-the-moment sorts of things and I rarely schedule them more than a couple of days ahead of time. I want my research-intensive articles to be a little more thorough and I want to schedule them a couple of weeks in advance to give me more time to reflect on them as well as make corrections.
3. Reach 650 reviews total.
Right now I’ve written 464 reviews, meaning I’ll have to read and review 186 more books, short stories and novellas this year. That means I’ll be writing a little over 16 reviews per month, which is doable for me. It’s about 4 reviews per week for the rest of the year, which is also quite doable. I read a lot and review pretty much everything I read. Besides, I like hitting big milestones like this.
I figure that if I reach my goal of 650 here in 2014 I can hit 800 in 2015 and (if I’m still around the blogosphere) reach 900 in 2016 and 1000 in 2017. My review production is going to slow down in 2016 and 2017 due to general life stuff but I’m hoping to at least hit 1,000 reviews in total for The Mad Reviewer. I don’t want to quit anytime soon, so I don’t have any plans for shutting down my blog for a long time yet.
4. Control my review requests!
I will clear my waiting list. No ifs, ands or buts. There is no excuse for me to still have the books authors requested I review on my list here in 2014. After I clear all of the pending requests, I will be initiating an open submission call for no more than a month, close down requests until I clear them again and then doing the same thing. This will be far more manageable and I’ll also have a new form for authors to fill out so I can weed out those books that really don’t interest me.
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These are my blogging goals for 2014. What are some of yours? What do you think of mine?
The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge 2014 Sign Up
The 2013 Mad Reviewing Reading & Reviewing Challenge is still in progress of course but I’m liking it so much that I figured I may as well start people on the sign up sheet. The challenge is the same as last year:
The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge is to read and review (either on Goodreads, Amazon or your own blog) 104 books in one year starting January 1, 2014 and ending December 31, 2014.
I’m fully aware that not everyone has time to read 104 books which is why I’ve created different levels of the challenge that you can aspire to:
1. Mad Reviewer: 104 books in one year. (2 books a week all year.)
2. Crazy Reviewer: 52 books in one year. (1 book a week all year.)
3. Slightly Sane Reviewer: 26 books in one year. (1 book every fortnight all year.)
4. Sane Reviewer: 12 books in one year. (1 book every month all year.) Continue reading