Wednesday 24 October 2012

Other Authors

One blogging activity I'll be trying to do from now on is to mention the writings of other authors, particularly the independent or 'indie' writers like me who appreciate all the support they can get as they work hard to publish and promote their works amidst the cataract of books published daily. Doing this will strengthen the online community of writers and will broaden the scope of this blog. I may write some reviews.

So: in the last couple of days I've 'met' John A Ferguson, a Scottish writer of science fiction and fantasy stories. He's also a chemistry teacher, a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an ambitious writer active in several mediums. You can find his Amazon author page here or his own website here  to see what I mean. I've just bought his short ebook story 'Kindred Soldiers' which portrays the moral struggle of a young soldier fighting in a futuristic interstellar war.

OK, enough for now, must get busy and read.

Tuesday 16 October 2012

The Calling preview video

Here's a short promotional video I've done for The Calling. Thanks to the compelling artwork of Victor Habbick it looks great, and thanks to these short clips of the music of Iona, it sounds good too. OK, it's not professionally put together, and that's because I did it myself on Windows Movie Maker. Whatever you think of Microsoft, they give you a few useful programs now and again.

But I had a look at a few other authors' previews and this is the sort of format you see for a science fiction novel. I hope to put together a longer video later, in the style of a cozy chat with the author. Perhaps I'll play my own music track too! ("No, pleeeez, anything but that!" they cry.)



And if that doesn't work, follow this link to YouTube to see the video.

Saturday 13 October 2012

Towards Better Reading

I picked up a good read. "the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", Mark Haddon. The narrator is a youth with Aspergers Syndrome. It's partly funny, partly bleak, partly amazing to see how his mind works. If you want to understand what this syndrome is like, read this!

There's also a writer named Lisa Genova, (her bio says 'holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience') her first novel "Still Alice" narrated by a brilliant neurologist slipping into Alzheimers, and two others she wrote about autism and stroke. Brings these 'ugly' words to life in full colour. Very human stories.

And by the way, The Calling is in print over at CreateSpace. But (and this is where it shows how I'm a beginner on a shoestring) I would seriously like to find an editor willing to help me sharpen it up even more. Perhaps another author who would like some similar help. I've become aware that this issue, the non-editing of independently-published books, is probably the biggest downfall of indie authors like me, in general. It has lead to a mountain of low-quality ebooks and I don't want to add a single pebble to that!