Tuesday, 4th March 2014 

Why do we go off One Genre - and not Necessarily on to Another?

Here's something that can affect both readers and writers: a total switch off regarding what we have been reading or writing. I don't think I am alone in this (both as reader and writer), but let me examine the subject further. Every detective or crime story revolves around the 'Dick' and the City or neighbourhood inhabited. With Coben I am in New Jersey and New York, with Rankin I am in Edinburgh, Scotland, even Sherlock Holmes is locked into London for most of his cases. I get fed up with the City (locality) and the guy concerned.

I can really enjoy Wilbur Smith - for a time - and glory in his ability to string stories together that let his readers enjoy many regions of Africa and from many angles. But after a time, even this palls on me. I switch to a 'How to...' book of some kind, until that makes me grow weary; I go to an historical text, and for days can be lost in the shenanigans going on in the period covered. After a bit, I lose interest. Is it an age thing; or due to too much reading?

So, I get back into the writing frame of mind: time to get on with the next phase of the opus I am writing. Do I have to - asks my mind? It tells me that I will have to breakdown and scrutinise umpteen waiting files to discover and string together the material needed for proof, elucidation, illustration (whatever) of the point(s) I am making in the historical narrative. After a time, though, even these pursuits can become enjoyable. Then comes the feeling that a break is needed from this - it is becoming a slog. Time for some relief by turning to something else, says my mind; and heh, I am back to square one. As the vultures say in the voices of 'The Beatles' sitting on a branch, "What'll we do now, then?"

Are you still with me? Is all this foreign to you? I would love to hear what those who love to stick to one genre have to say on the subject - either as readers or writers. I would hate to think I (and those who act in a similar manner to me) am one of an abject minority.

So, what are we going to do next, GK?.....

23 February 2014

Mastering Digital Tools and Sites

I thought I would just take a short perambulation around some of the things I have been trying to master in the last week or so. First, has been getting to grips with my website: how it operates, where everything goes, using photos to best effect, what to leave in and what to leave out. Visiting other sites to see these masters in operation has been eye-opening. I think I agree with most experts who say you mustn't use your site as merely an advertising place for your own work. Of course it is just that, in one sense, but it is so much more useful and self-fulfilling in that you may be able to offer a service to others, in some way.

Then, I have been trying to make my way around Goodreads - a very interesting place to be, among some industrious and clear-headed people. Who says that reading is dead! They should go there and see the truth. Sticking my nose into some red-hot blogging places has done me no harm either. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience out there.

Another objective of mine has been to become au fait with Scrivener. There is little doubt left in my mind now that this is the tool for me - if I can master it. I've also tried Fivrr to see how it works - with excellent results. How do you like this 3d version of a book I am working on?

I hope to have this story online in the near future - so look out.

A great deal of my time, however, has been spent copy editing a history article of mine that is due for publication as part of an anthology in April/May. In it I talk about people going from Great Britain to India, mainly as officials of the East India Company. Do you have any idea of the kind of money these young men going out to India in the mid-eighteenth century could return with, if they survived the climate and the trip there and back? It was the equivalent of $millions in today's money. I won't go into the ethics of what the whole business became - imperialism and racism in particular; but in the early stages the commercial activity was of mutual benefit to traders and to indigenous peoples in South-East Asia; but enough about all that for now.

January 2014

'Who Am I' - or is it - 'Who I Am'

Hi, everyone, I thought I might introduce myself by giving out some of the things that make me tick - and in doing so, let you know whether I'm the kind of person you might like to know and whose stuff might interest you. So, here is a list of what I'm interested in and get up to - I hope they strike a bell with lots of you out there.

I like people, especially out of the ordinary ones. What makes them tick?

Life, family and friends - the external world; sort of concentric circles outwards from who I am and where I live. 

Work: This consists of writing and research mainly.

Good health: well, this is a no-brainer - you just got to keep in shape, you owe it to yourself and those who love you and depend on you. 

Humour: having a good laugh with agreeable company or reading a book, seeing a film or stage act that creases you up.

Money: who isn't interested in that? We never have enough and there's always someone or some organisation ready to take it away. 

Good food: Yeah, I like my share of the 'fine dining' if I'm flush. All sorts of cusines are up for grabs. I'm no picker - just don't give me boiled onions or raisens!

Travel and Holidays: Can't get enough; but I don't like the one without the other. Unfortunately, airports are not friendly places now and the roads are so crowded; rail stations, however, have been getting their act together and the train is making a comeback. 

Good weather: letting me get outside and about places - well that speaks for itself. Where I live, however, the skies are not always blue - in fact I think the whole world shudders at the mention or thought of what we have to put up with, at times.

Various pursuits, hobbies and such, interest me: Intellectual quests, Art, Literature, Genealogy; music (just about every kind that has a melody, allows me to hear the words, or almost makes me swoon away with the sheer splendour of what I'm hearing. I'm thinking of the standard crooners of the last twenty years, of jazz, Country and Western, through to Puccini, Rimsky Korsakov, and tenors like Pavarotti).

Sport: soccer and golf have (I suppose) been my main interests when it comes to the physical world, though swimming and throwing the discus were, still are, other likes.

I am always wondering where the world is going to? What will it be like in 200 years? So, science, cosmology, new materials, inventions, discoveries all excite me - and I read and enquire about all this. I like this world - it's maybe not much - in the cosmological scale of things, as the man said - but its home!

I'm sure none of this is much different from you. It's in the things that make us most happy, and our ability to avoid what gives us most pain that the differences occur. I have all the same urges and drives that are common to others: I like to talk; I admire and (covertly) still fancy the opposite sex - don't tell the wife. I like to be approved of. I like dogs - but don't have one - like cats and horses too.

Where I might be a little different from some, lies in the fact that as well as writing about people who could be my contemporaries, who have lived and are living in my era, I also write history books; I delve into the past. I have read, taught, lectured and written about people whose lives are as interesting as those alive. (I wonder if Science Fiction also isn't just about envisaging the interesting individuals that might be met in the future, just like those you meet in history, the world that has passed away.)

Anyway, what this amounts to is that I have a fair bit of 'history' under my belt, so to speak, and an awful lot of it still to write - it lies about my computer in great big slush files, which have still to be raided and formed into lives, subjects, theories - into any sort of project you can think of. (You can run your eye over all the stuff already written, and I will keep you up to date with what I'm working on at any one moment; maybe even ask your help, on occasion.

I also like stories very much. I like short stories; I like anecdotes and funny sketches, whether they are made up or real. I like poetry, I like films. There's not much I don't like in the written and spoken worlds. Again, you can let your eyes slide over my fiction stuff - published and available on all the main internet sites - the links (just as with my history books and articles) are provided here.

How I like to Think of Myself (This might not be how others see me!)

Analysing my life, to date, my main aim, the prime objective all the way through, seems to have been to fight the bully. I am nearly always on the side of the underdog, especially if operating against what appears to be insuperable odds.

I want a better, a fairer world. I hate the very idea of a super-elite, and the division of the world's wealth into the familiar 5 per cent who own everything against the 95 per cent who don't. Give me strength!

When I hear music, I immediately want to praise the person who wrote it, the creator. Yet, he/she is seldom mentioned in the same breath as the person(s) performing; who have captured the limelight. It is the same with art and science. The head of the laboratory team (like Rutherford) takes the acclaim for the team who have worked on the theory or whatever.

All history is something like that: the winners write the story; the sources can be biased; some real time heroes get a bad press - that resonates through the ages.

My Author Platform

I read (and write) across genres, with no preferences. I just ask that what I'm reading is well-written and keeps my interest. My own ambition is to maintain curiosity and keep my reader's attention; to entertain - certainly, to amuse - yes, if pertinent; and to inform - if relevant. For example, I have just finished Stephen King's book, On Writing. There's a man who knows a thing or two (and who has been through a wringer - I'm thinking of his serious accident).  

Naturally, just like anyone else who puts out something in the creative world, I wish to become known; to win sales of my books (fiction, history or whatever) - to be found, on the Internet or in bookshops. To that end, I publish as an 'Indie', on the Kindle, and on any other appliance.

I have read countless printed books on good writing; and numerous 'How to books' on my Kindle. So far, I have escaped 'Facebook', but I sense my time is up and I must surrender.

I joined 'Goodreads' and though I haven't yet had the opportunity to enter fully into it, what almost bowled me over was the number of books I have read - and I'm forever reading. The site determines that you list a certain number - to show you are bonafide I suppose - but I had to stop at around 130 or so, and that was after only a cursory glance at the shelves that surround me at home. With what was on my Kindle and elsewhere, there are thousands, I should imagine that I have read in my lifetime; it would be impossible to remember. During our existence, we (readers) must get through unbelievable amounts - and then there are the newspapers and magazines to add to that! Gee, surely there's been no time to look at TV?

I'll be in touch again, once I get myself together.

All the best for now,

George