So, what? You thought this would be about when a writer has a bad day, because the dreaded writer’s block has struck, and the ‘muse’ has not just gone quiet but appears to have packed up and gone on a world cruise?

Well, I suppose, it is kind of about that. I have seen several friends posting about having writer’s block or about losing the urge to write. However, you want to put it, the net result is that you might sit in front of your computer, at that glaring white screen and … nada. Nothing. Zilch. Coming up empty.

Feeling crappy about it yet?

That had to be the worst part. Someone says they have writer’s block, and immediately, there are at least half a dozen suggestions of what works for others. Whoa right there, because, and here’s the biggie: just because someone calls it writer’s block doesn’t mean that is the root cause of the problem.

Whilst many of us would love to be able to write professionally, and to have a good enough income that we don’t have to worry about a day job, the reality is far from that for the majority. It doesn’t stop us writing, generally, but there can come a point when the thought of trying to write is just too much. Happens on one day, and another … Before you know it, it’s been a week since you have managed to write anything. Then you start to feel guilty because surely if you were a real writer this wouldn’t happen …

So, yes, I am going to plug my other hobby which is writing related, namely online role-play. I will start with a brief reminder of how it works. The first part is … creation of a Facebook account which uses a pseudonym.

Oh my god! I hear your exclaim. That’s lying. That’s contrary to Facebook T&Cs. Yes, the latter is true, but then you are creating an account in YOUR AUTHOR PSEUDONYM. I work in a very conservative industry. I was even told off for wearing (cowboy) boots because I had a to fly to a meeting, and wore boots on the plane, because they were comfortable. But that’s another story. The point is, conservative industry, so writing about one of your main characters having a … (clears throat) … moment of passion, and writing in your own name, might be a bit difficult. Not in keeping with the company’s image or the image of our employees, a voice would boom.

Remember that thing about writer’s block. Imagine if one of your colleagues found out that you wrote books. What kind of books? Romance, you say. Oooh, like that Fifty Shades of … Don’t start! The upshot is that someone denigrates what you have been trying to do, and you were already feeling rough with the writer’s block …

So, roleplay. You have created your account. Next stage is to pick a character. Any character from your own work. Trawl through the internet and look for a photograph of a model, perhaps some fashion model who has the sort of features that you envisage for your character. A word of advice is don’t pick actors. Too many people do that, and then there is nothing unique about your character, because chances are the pictures are for another role.

Now the writing bit. Start with describing ‘ordinary things’: waking up, morning ablutions. Perhaps describe an interaction with a pet, or a family member. Fair enough, your character may not be from the modern era, so adjust that routine to fit in with your time period or world. Only write a paragraph.

The key point is start small. Then perhaps you might think about something that has hacked you off at work. Huh? Why do I want to do that? It’s called mood-setting and this is why it is useful. It is useful because it can provide impetus. The other month, one of my friends online told me she was having a bad day. No problem, I said. When you are home, we will write a fight scene, and you can release your bad temper that way. Ideally, you can make your fight scene realistic, but hey, it is a fantasy fight scene, so let rip.

The upshot was that my friend and I wrote a decent length chapter where my male
character observed her female character show two bad guys the error of their ways. Then we wrote a follow up scene, because he had patched up her injuries, being a doctor, and wanted to check up on her. That led to another fight scene, and this time, my character insisted that she needed someone to watch her for signs of concussion …

Before we knew what was happening, it seemed we had a burgeoning romance on our hands. But, this was where it became interesting and the writer’s block suddenly disappeared into a pile of sawdust.

Who knows, if you ran through this exercise with your existing work in progress, you might find that you have uncovered details of your character which you had not anticipated. Even something as simple as how they like their morning coffee could have implications, not least if it turns out that they prefer tea.

The key point is, writer’s block, the bane of an aspiring author, is not such a big scary thing after all. Even if you choose to not use what you have written, keep the pseudonym account, remembering to copy anything you have written to a backup document, just in case. My own practice is to keep several accounts, one for each of my major characters. That way, I can see which one wants to be talkative. Right now, it is Ramses, my protagonist in “Merysekhmet”, a story that arose from a desire to write a fight scene. When it is finished, it will be a freebie book, which will be uploaded onto a Facebook ‘Like’ page. At the weekend, one of my first characters, Gavril, decided he wanted to have his say. Casimir didn’t want to be left out. He realised that his Mate had been somewhat left on her own, and needed to rectify that.

By using this method, I have a situation where unless all the boys go quiet, there is always some little thing I can put together. So, next time writer’s block hits you, give it a go. You might surprise yourself.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN

“Bound”, Volume 1 of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn
Amazon.com $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQFBNY
Amazon.co.uk £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016TQFBNY
Smashwords.com £0.00 (Free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/589130

 

 

 

Ladies are very much in the news right now, from the Womens’ Marches of the weekend to comparisons between various political figures and their roles. Today’s post focuses on some of the ladies of my novels. Continuing on my theme of developing a character, I have explained that from my early writing as an online roleplayer, I have needed to work from an image. The image might not be the final ‘look’ of a character, since I add other details not apparent from a picture. It remains that I have to start somewhere, and for me, a picture or pictures are my inspiration.

There was another factor. I came across this description of a well-known series by Christine Feehan recently:

A quick summary of the first in the series: The leader of the Carpathians is going to kill himself because one of only two female Carpathians has been murdered and he’s distraught over his failure as the leader. He’s in tremendous psychic pain, and his anguish reaches a woman across town who is also psychic. She reaches back to him mentally, and they begin to talk telepathically. She stops him from doing the deed, he flies through the night to find her and see what she looks like, etc. He is very surprised to find out she’s a human, and not one of his kind at all.

The next day he arranges to meet her, romance and a lot of humping ensue, and there begins the predictable sequence contained in every other Carpathian novel written by Feehan.

1. Males lose their ability to see color at about age 21 and will not regain it until they meet their mates. It’s like Jude Deveraux’s thing where “you marry the one who can tell the twins apart.” It happens in every novel and takes the thrill out of initial attraction. Got color? Got mate!
2. Sex scenes are intense and involve blood sucking, blood exchange, and always, always, always the caveat that “Carpathians have sex in a more savage fashion than humans and thus cannot have sex with humans because their super duper strength and giant manhoods will kill the poor humans.” Further, there is always one doggie-style from-behind sex scene. It’s like clockwork. Once the couple are a-humpin’ in earnest, Feehan will throw in a rather spicy doggy style scene. Over a fallen tree, in a cave. Doggy style. Count on it.
3. Carpathians mate for life, and are entirely bound to each other, such that if the Carpathian male “goes to ground” during the day and is asleep and psychically unreachable by the female human, the female human is completely distraught and will try to kill herself rather than go on without her mate. Very angst. Tres drama.
4. Carpathians bind their mates to them with this Christian-vows-sounding oath that they recite in their own language while Doing It, and that binds their mate to them in self destructive manner described above.
5. The human females that are in some way “eligible,” i.e. through existing psychic ability, some demonstrable higher power or sixth sense, can be turned into Carpathians with an exchange of blood at three separate times. The conversion process is full of high drama and much soul-twisting angst on the parts of both the hero and the heroine, with lots of barfing and sickness for the converter.
6. The other Carpathians all have individual signature powers, and many of them focus on healing with herbs, candles, and chanting and singing, and there’s some weird dance involved with casting and uncasting a spell.
7. Doggy. Style.

So there you have it. You don’t have to read them now, because every single book follows this formula.

Yes, I laughed. I haven’t actually read the series, although I have tried, but it did not ‘float my boat’. Perhaps I know why now. But it did make me think. I write paranormal romance. There are a lot of indie authors in this genre and there are some phenomenally successful series in this genre. Plus, there is the old saying that sex sells.

But as any self-respecting writer will tell you, they want their story to be different, rather than the same old stuff, even though as Ms Feehan has demonstrated, that same old stuff is what some readers want. I looked at it from a different perspective. Quite often fans of my favourite authors will put up pictures of their collections of that author. I was surprised to note that, whilst I might have a ‘full set’ of my own favourites, this was far from the case with others. The average seemed to be half a dozen of the twenty or so titles. So clearly, the reader is after a bit more than the ‘same old’, because I don’t believe that the ‘lack’ of books is just down to finances., although, given the prices now being charged (£9.99 for an e-book edition by my own favourite), finances might play more of a part in time to come.

I have already admitted that I needed a picture inspiration for my ladies, and also that there were key elements which were almost expected in the genre. The trick was how to give my ladies a twist which made them different.

So help me, I was not going to have wilting violets as my leading ladies, nor was I going to have male-hating harridans. Aaleahya, the mate of Gavril, was a light-worker in her own right when she met him. Alix, the mate of Bran, was a NY State Police Homicide Detective. Stefania, the mate of Fane, broke away from her Pack, surviving on her own for over fifty years. Merida, Owain’s mate, grew up ‘in the system’ after losing her parents in an RTA, but she went on to run her own business. Strong ladies all, and females who would work in partnership with their males.

My stories are about the balance in a relationship. So far, that balance has been a male-female pairing, but that is not necessarily the case. One of my favourite online stories at present is a story based on Viking legend, of the relationship between War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and his lover, a Viking, whose soul provides the ‘humanity’ to be seen in War’s eyes. It is a well written story, with the emphasis on story, rather than on sex. The characters are explored, the rationale for their actions dissected. Yes, there is sex, but it is not the focus. Yesterday’s episode was over the fact that the Viking went to the trouble of buying pizza for War, because he was concerned about him not eating properly. That is a relationship.

Back to my ladies and ensuring that they were not stereotypes. Another technique I have used is the ‘interview’ technique. A Google search will bring up numerous options, but this one is my favourite in terms of questions which make sense: How to Interview Your Book Character. Why this one? Simply, they offer four approaches:

• Twenty questions
• Basic information
• “Gloves Off” questions
• Freestyle interview

I have used the ‘gloves off’ approach when ‘interviewing’ Fane, and admit that they do give you a different way of looking at your character, not least because it is not the usual stuff like height, eye colour etc.

This is another option in terms of Character Questionnaires: Proust and Gotham Character Questionnaires

The point is that you have the chance to give your character a twist that, whilst you follow some of the ‘requirements’ of your genre, also gives your own work that all-important, unique twist.

How should this not be achieved? In a complete contrast to the excellent writing cited above in the tale of War and the Viking, I was involved in another project which I left for various reasons. One of them was the way that, if things became ‘boring’ for the lead author, there were what could only be termed random sex moments … graphic, random sex moments. I am not a prude. I can write a sex scene just as much as anyone, but when sex is thrown in at the expense of the story? Forget it. Any long-term fan of your work is likely to be put off, unless pornography is the very specific genre in which you are working.

I am not writing porn. I am writing a romance, yes, but it is not porn. I want to show ladies who can stand up for themselves, and who are not afraid to tell their mates what they think of their moments of idiocy. That’s where the character questionnaires and the interviews come into play.

To close, I would like to share the fun I am having at the moment. One of my fellow online authors was having a bad day at work. No problem, I told her, we can write a fight scene when you are home. We used two relatively underused characters. As their story progressed, we realised that the one thing that they had not done yet was had wild sex. Call that a paranormal romance? Yes, it still was a romance. It still features paranormal creatures, but not wild sex. Not yet, anyway. It will probably become a novel in its own right, but in the meantime, I am enjoying exploring a character who has more to him that the need to ‘do it doggy style’. I am enjoying being a writer. Knowing your characters well is likely to ensure that you, too, will enjoy writing.

Until next time.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN

“Bound”, Volume 1 of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn
Amazon.com $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQFBNY
Amazon.co.uk £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016TQFBNY
Smashwords.com £0.00 (Free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/589130

Having created Gavril as my first character as an Alpha Cwn Annwn, the next stage was to create his Beta, the Pack second in command. But I had a bit of a problem. Many of my characters start with a picture of a male model. When it came to creating the Cwn Annwn Beta, I had two completely different individuals whom I wished to use. So, what was the solution?

Simples! Create two Pack Betas. Welcome to Bran Cadwgan and Owain Cadwaladr.

Let’s look at Bran Cadwgan first. The model who inspired him was Angel Macho, and specifically, it was one picture in particular which caught my eye, and inspired the first Bran-oriented story. I will add at this juncture that I had found out that my maternal family contained Ashkenazi Jewish blood, courtesy of my great-grandmother. I know nothing more about this side of the family, but a few years ago, whilst on a business trip to Berlin, I was able to go to the Holocaust Museum. What happened to the Ashkenazi sect really hit home then. When looking for a photograph for “Bran”, this one struck a chord. There was something in his eyes, plus there was the Star of David around his neck.

How could a creature based on Welsh legend end up wearing a Star of David. The short story, “Eliana” was born, a short story which became the opening chapter of “Beta”, the third volume in the Diaries of the Cwn Annwn. In that story, Bran is involved in the evacuation of children at risk of deportation to the concentration camps towards the end of the Second World War. Eliana was a Jewish girl whom he was sent to evacuate. In return for Bran’s jacket, given because she was cold, she told Bran that she needed to give him something in return. The only thing that she had was the necklace her own mother had given her. Bran promises to return it to her, but when the time comes, she tells him to keep it. He does and continues to wear it in her memory.

Bran became the serious of the two Cwn Annwn Betas. He also became the one who was reluctant to expose himself to public scrutiny. He hid behind a wall of technology, espousing the emerging age of the internet until a point when he controlled the sourcing of information used by the Pack behind a wall. It was safe. There was no risk of humans finding out about the paranormal world and no risk of the Cwn Annwn being exploited in the way in which the Nazis had tried in “Alpha”, Volume 2 of the Diaries of the Cwn Annwn. It served a purpose, because in later years, that understanding of the Web would prove invaluable.

Bran’s world was to change further when, contrary to his belief that he would never find a Mate because of ‘failings’ during the War, he had found his Mate, in Alix Gosselin, a wolf shifter and the only daughter of a powerful Alpha from Canada. Alix’s ‘look’ was inspired by my own cousin, Nikeeta Bellgard, a student and model in India.

Returning to the story of my two Pack Betas, originally, Owain Cadwaladr was inspired by the actor, Manu Bennett. However, my pet troll struck again, and the original Facebook account for Owain was reported as fake. If I had not backed up what my co-authors and I had written, we would have lost significant sections of the story. I learnt from the incident, and changed the model for Owain, such that the image for Owain’s story looks like this:

The challenge was why did I need two Betas? What was so different between Owain and Bran. I made Owain the more lighthearted of the two. He was still aware of the responsibilities of being a Beta, but he was the jovial barman, he was the teacher of the Pack younglings. Unlike Bran, he was fairly certain that he would find his Mate, but he was willing to wait. Que sera, sera … That was Owain.

But, for all that lightheartedness, Owain has a serious side, and that will be seen in “Delta”, when along with his newly-discovered Mate, Merida Davinier, he investigates the sex-trafficking ring uncovered by Alix Gosselin and her human State Police partner, Jake Petersen.

In conclusion, Bran and Owain were two sides of the ‘Beta’ coin. Both are individuals, but each complements the other. Such is the challenge of developing a character. And, as the best TV shows say, stay tuned for the next installment, when I will examine how I designed some of my leading ladies.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN

“Bound”, Volume 1 of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn
Amazon.com $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQFBNY
Amazon.co.uk £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016TQFBNY
Smashwords.com £0.00 (Free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/589130

I would like to dedicate this post to my ‘pet’ Amazon troll, since one of the accusations made by this lovely individual was plagiarism. My co-authors and I refute this accusation. It says it all that the individual refuses to engage in any interaction other than leaving relatively anonymous reviews against my books.

First that accusation. The name of the first character created for the Diaries of the Cwn Annwn was Gavril Negrescu. In my original outline for him, he was born in North Wales, his identity was based on the Welsh legend of the Cwn Annwn. I had asked myself why there was a stereotype involved in some legends. For example, Hellhounds were all sired by the Devil, and are loners who exist only to kill. I will address Hellhounds in another post, since that is the basis of my second creation: Fane Anghelescu. Both of these characters were original, because I took the basic legend, and added my own twist.

Such is the way that I write that I needed a model, a picture to inspire me to create Gavril’s stories. I used the Hungarian model, Andrei Andrei. To my mind, the sheer range of facial expressions in his photographs gave me the emotional range which I felt was essential.

So, who was Gavril Negrescu? Born in ‘the shadow of Cadair Idris’ in North Wales, his birth name was Gabriel Black. In his youth, he knew such figures in history as King Henry VII of England, along with his sons, Prince Arthur and Prince Henry, who would become King Henry VIII. I retained the part of the legend which had the Cwn Annwn in service to the Celtic Goddess of the Underworld, Mallt-y-Nos, but then my early interest in Greek legend came into play.

In Greek legend, the Underworld has two distinct elements: the Elysian Fields to where the heroes received their rewards and Tartarus, where those who had committed evil acts where punished for eternity. To me, it seemed reasonable that there must be some way of determining who was a hero and who was evil. Egyptian legend has a similar approach. So, I created my version of the Cwn Annwn, where Gavril  leads a pack of ‘judges’, who serve the Goddess by determining the truth of the soul. Those who are guilty are ‘harvested’, a euphemism for ‘killed’ and their souls damned for eternity. The innocent, often the victims of the guilty, receive their reward in ‘Paradise’ bearing in mind that each individual’s idea of Paradise is slightly different.

But there was a twist, which was where my version of Hellhounds came into play. However, I shall address that later.

I like a good romance, so that had to be covered in how I designed the character of Gavril Negrescu. Yes, it may be a bit stereotypical, but I liked the fact that everything in life has balance, and that was where finding his Mate would come into play. By definition, Gavril would encounter some pretty nasty individuals, so he would need balance. He would need the light provided by his Mate. However, finding her, and it was a ‘her’ for Gavril, was the trick. Eventually, he found her in the Carpathians, and this is why he is known through the books as Gavril, rather than Gabriel, because his Mate used the Romanian version of his name, since it was her birth tongue. Again, there was picture inspiration, in a lovely series of photographs done by Andrei Andrei and Gabriela Iliescu in a shoot by Thomas Synnamon called ‘Tenderness’. I suggest you check out the link, because you will see what I mean about emotion: Tenderness by Thomas Synnamon

Then, I needed to develop the character of Gavril. I had come across too many instances where the Alpha of a ‘shifter’ pack was abusive in some way. But Gavril was born in a time when being a leader meant that the lives of your followers, in his case his Pack, were in his hands. Add to that his ability to read the souls of those around him, and the chances of him being abusive was remote in the extreme. But at the same time, he was not going to be a passive wimp either. This is a male who was capable of standing up to Kings. Thus we have the beginnings of what would become “Alpha”, the story of Gavril and Aaleahya, his Mate.

After legends, my other passion is history, courtesy of my late Latin teacher Teresa Kiersnowska. Again, though, I wanted to pick up the less well-known bits of history, hence Gavril and Aaleahya’s story being based largely in an area of Eastern Europe. Most assume that all the ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries were overrun by the Nazis in the Second World War, but after talking to a Romanian doctor at a business meeting, I realised that this wasn’t always the case. There was also the Nazi regime’s fascination with the paranormal and towards the closing stages of the war, in anything that might give them an advantage.

So, take a character who has the need to care for others almost bred into his DNA, and the ideas were spinning merrily. My day job also means that I drive a lot, and when I am out on the road is when my plotting mind takes over, so that driving 250 miles doesn’t seem so bad.

The key thing was that Gavril was an entirely original character, made up from my own take on several legends: Greek, Celtic and Egyptian, to name a few. A simple Google search reveals that no one else has used the idea of the Cwn Annwn. A search on Amazon demonstrates that there is a band of that name, but that’s all. So, my dear ‘pet’ troll. Take your accusation of plagiarism and place it where the sun don’t shine.

The next installment will be about another favourite character of mine: Bran Cadwgan, one of two Betas of the Cwn Annwn. And yes, there is another male model involved: Angel Macho.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN

“Bound”, Volume 1 of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn
Amazon.com $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQFBNY
Amazon.co.uk £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016TQFBNY
Smashwords.com £0.00 (Free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/589130