Tag: #fiction

The Muse?

Sometimes the writing process is a complete mystery. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft of Empire’s Hostage, the sequel to Empire’s Daughter (which will be released in paperback soon, but that’s another post for another day). Lena, the protagonist, is hostage to a truce between the Empire and the lands to the north, and is feeling confused, frustrated, constrained…and also suffering a little bit of what we would call today culture shock. Looking to find a way to both condense a bit of relevant ‘history’ into something not boring to the reader, and to further delineate the differences between the Empire and Linrathe, the land north of the Wall, my brain suddenly produced – in about thirty easy minutes – a song which effectively did both. Sung by the party with which she is travelling, it fit perfectly into the chapter. But where did that come from?

What has your writer’s mind produced out of seemingly nowhere?

 

ChiSeries, Covers, and Cash

This past Tuesday, I had the honour of reading at the ChiSeries here in Guelph. Some background; the ChiSeries (The Chiaroscuro Reading Series) is a national Canadian reading series put on in a number of cities, promoting genre writing. I was reading along with two award winning and/or major award nominee writers of science fiction and fantasy: A.M. Dellamonica and Kelly Robson.

Spinnings Final Cover
Available on Amazon

It is a little intimidating for an indie writer to be reading alongside two established names in genre fiction…and it’s even more so to be reading last. But it seemed to go ok….the applause for my reading (I read an abridged version of my short story In an Absent Dream, currently published in my e-chapbook Spinnings), was hearty and I think genuine, and Kelly had some kind words for me. It’s allergy season, so I was concerned my voice wouldn’t hold out, but it did, although I think it was a bit scratchy by the end.

Family members and writing group members came along to support me, which was truly appreciated. I’d also got the proof version of the paperback of Empire’s Daughter that day, so I brought it along, mostly for reactions to the cover (positive, I’m happy to say!) I’ll be posting the cover soon, once I have an actual launch date. I’m still working on finding all the errors and correcting the proof.

And I’m actually (and unusually) getting paid – an honorarium – for the reading, thanks to various levels of government that support the ChiSeries. My (and yours, if you’re Canadian) tax dollars, supporting genre writers. How very nice.

Of That Day and Hour, by Anthony O’Brien: A Promotion

“‘Of That Day and Hour’; a page-turning psychological thriller. Of that day and hour cover

Jefferson Davies is a lecturer at Harvard University. His life takes on an unexpected, dark and chilling twist after receiving a phone call from an ex-student and lover.

Eve works as a psychiatrist at a maximum security prison. Her patient is Casey Lee Jones. A convicted killer. His defense for the murder of two police officers is his ‘knowing’: his precognition. He knows the future, moments, hours, days, weeks or years before it happens. It was kill or be killed. He will only cooperate if Jeff’s involved, yet the men have never met.

Jeff flies out to Colorado, convinced he’s dealing with a psychopath. Scientifically he dismisses the phenomenon of precognition. Through a series of mysterious incidents, he begins to have serious doubts, even questioning his own sanity. Seeking the truth opens a Pandora’s Box, and what’s been started cannot be undone.

A fast moving, chilling, psychological thriller that will keep you guessing right to the end.”

This isn’t a review: it’s a promotion for a fellow indie writer. I was the editor of this edition of the book (previously titled Bad Man & Mad Men), so I can’t ethically review it.   Of That Day and Hour is available from Amazon in e-book or paperback format.

Amazon.com link

Amazon.co.uk link

 

 

Name a Character Contest

I need a name for a fairly major character in my in-progress young adult adventure novel, Empire’s Hostage, the second in the Empire’s Legacy series. Empire’s Legacy is set in a world not quite our own, but that is based on Britain/Northern Europe in the years after the fall of Rome. The character I need to name is the “Viking” heir-apparent to the king of the islands of the north coast, more or less equivalent to the Hebrides.

He’s not a terribly nice character, so might not want to suggest your best friend’s name!  The name also needs to sound vaguely Scandanavian/Icelandic/Gaelic to fit in with the rest of the names in the story.

What do you win?  A mention in the acknowledgments in the book, when it sees the light of electronic day sometime next year; a free copy of it and its predecessor, Empire’s Daughter, and, if you wish, either a review of a book of your own on this website, or a beta-read of work-in-progress.

The contest remains open until I have twenty names to choose from, or to December 31. Respond in the comments section or to marianlthorpe at gmail.com

Feel free to send this out to others!

thanks,

Marian

How Stories Come to Be

If you’ve read my profile on this or other sites, (or if you read the post called Landscape and Story I posted a few days ago) you will know that I describe myself as (among other things) a part-time student of archaeology.  Currently I’m in the middle of an on-line course from the University of Exeter called “Landscape Archeology I”.  This week’s assignment was to look at what types of environmental archaeological evidence – things like animal bones, soil and water micro-organisms, wood – can be used to interpret either a castle or monastery site.

My response to the assignment was to write a brief story about a fictional monastery and point out all the things we knew about this monastery because of the archaeological evidence, which was fun and more interesting for me than just making a chart or list.  However…now this fictional monastery has a life of its own in my writer’s brain, and doesn’t want to go away.  It wants to tell its story more fully.

It doesn’t fit into the series I’m writing right now, but it may just fit into another planned novel/novel series. Or maybe it will be something completely new.  I don’t know yet.  I’m hoping I can use it for further assignments for the course, but regardless, it is now a real, dynamic place inside my mind, and another dimension of my created landscape(s) has made itself evident.  Now I have to see where it takes me.

Encouraging a fellow writer

I think we all need to do this for each other as much as possible in the indie writing community!  This is a link to Dave Whaley’s site for Z:UK, his newly published book.

https://authorwhaley.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/2015-dave-whaley-the-published-author/comment-page-1/#comment-26

Britain and zombies…what more could I ask?  I’ll be reading it soon!

Finding an authentic voice

Occasionally readers ask me why I do so much research – the world I have created in Empire’s Daughter is fictional, after all!  But it’s a thinly-disguised fiction, an imagined country based on Britain after the departure of the Roman Empire in the 4th century A.D.  While there are many many departures from whatever the reality of that time was (and if you are interested, I recommend Robin Fleming’s book Britain after Rome), this created world must be real and coherent and true to itself in my mind, or I can’t write about it convincingly.  I can’t, for example, suddenly introduce the internal combustion engine, or llamas.

In an earlier post I explained that I am currently on a side track – the history of the Empire that the character Colm gives to Lena in Empire’s Daughter becomes a key theme in Empire’s Hostage, and I realized I didn’t know what that history says, entirely.  I’ve started work on that history (which I plan to be included as an appendix in Empire’s Hostage, providing it isn’t too long in the end) but I’ve been struggling to find an authentic voice.  How would Colm write?

Discussing it over breakfast with my husband, we bounced around a few ideas.  What sort of history is it?  Is it a collection of stories, like the Scandinavian sagas?  (No.)  Is it a collection of facts and names and dates, like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle?  (Also no.)  Is it a history like Tacitus’s Agricola, and Germany?  Yes!  And there was my model – Agricola, written by the Roman historian Tacitus in AD 98, and Germany, apparently also written in the same year.  Both books

agricola

discuss not just military history, but social and political as well.  Exactly what I needed.

My copy of the books, which are almost always published in translation together, is the fairly recent one by A.R. Birley, and the language is accessible while maintaining a formality of style. I won’t be copying it exactly, of course, but it will give me the rhythms and cadence and structure to make Colm’s history sound right. So, off to start re-reading Agricola, paying attention this time not to the facts, but to the style!