Visualise it.

When starting to write you next book, do you plot it all out, including the locations your characters will inhabit? I do.

I start by thinking about various places I think might be suitable. For instance, in Midnight Days I used places round my home town, Liverpool, amongst which were St Luke’s bombed out church

and houses in Faulkner Street, as two scenes. I then “transported” them, mentally placing the church next to what became a character’s house.

There’s nothing you can’t do, when creating backdrops to your story. They don’t have to appear in your work as they do in real life. You can mix and match places to suit your own needs and tailor them to suit the story.

So set yourself the task of making your story’s background as three dimensional as possible. Paint a word picture for your readers to absorb and enable them to “live” your creations.

The world’s out there waiting for you to capture its many images and create them anew – go for it!

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Staff pick on Readwave!

I recently joined writers site, Readwaves, and posted some of my short stories there. Well, guess what? My short story, “When the Willow weeps for me,” has been chosen as staff pick of the week

To view the story and discover other new writers, go to:

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Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder ~ or is it?

Live the adventure. Fight to win your freedom.  Run, until your lungs burn and your heart pounds. Be carried away on a swirl of music. Let it fill your mind and soul. Immerse yourself in a story you’ll never forget.

Step into the world of Jeremiah Tully

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Cats ~can’t live with ‘em and can’t live with ‘em!

You know when cats go crazy and go on a one feline rampage? Well look at the state of my bed after my kitty cat, Meg, did just that. What really rubs salt in the wound is that she then, exhausted from her efforts, curled up on top of my dad’s old dressing gown and went to sleep.

Bloody cheek!

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A rose upon my brow.

I walk on into the forest night, a rose upon my brow.

The moonlight casts its eerie glow upon the rose upon my brow.

My pain is dull, yet bright, as endless miles I track.

The burden in my heart is great, but ne’er as heavy as the rose upon my brow.

When, oh when will my wanderings end and release me from this spell.

I know not when, I know not how, just the weight of the rose upon my brow.

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How does your garden bloom?

The garden of your mind that is. Is it like mine, speeding along at what sometimes feels like a million miles an hour? Images, ideas and inspiration sleet in and out of my brain and whilst as a writer I appreciate having a vivid imagination, it can occasionally feel like I’m going mad.

Why? Because the abundance of ideas I get arrive at the most awkward of times. It always seems to be the dead of night and unless I clamber out of bed and write them down, by the time morning arrives they’ve vanished into the ether.

Of course they’re a lot of weeds in amongst the flowers. What seemed to make sense , in my half awake state, turn out to be utterly ridiculous come the cold light of day.

I consult my notes and that’s when the pruning begins: cutting back on the dead wood, trimming the over effusive and hopefully arriving at ideas that provide a smooth, manicured outline for my next manuscript.

I don’t always tend my garden as much as I should, but when I do and manage to create a work that reaches out and spreads its seeds far and wide, it’s a wonderful feeling.

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Be careful what you wish for.

Some of you may remember my recent post, Bloody teeth! Where I ranted on about one of my teeth hurting and extolling the benefits of wearing dentures. Well, I went to the dentist, moaning, groaning and clutching my face, and guess what? The tooth is infected, just one smidgeon away from an abscess.

So now I’m on a course of anti-biotics to try and clear it up. That said, my dentist is not optimistic about me keeping it and since it’s right in the front, it’ll mean a denture.

Me and my big mouth!

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Bloody teeth!

I’d sooner wear dentures any day, at least they don’t ache.

As some of you may know, I paid a visit to the dentist a few weeks ago for some much needed fillings, which  took two days to complete. Afterwards, when the novacane wore off, I felt like I’d been in a boxing match and lost.

Since then all’s been fine, until Saturday night when one of my other damn teeth started to throb. The right side of my face, from the corner of my mouth, up to my ear, is in agony. And of course it’s a bank holiday, so the dentist is shut. I could try for an emergency appointment, but unfortunately I don’t have the equivalent of the national debt to pay for it. So it’s Ibuprofen and Co-codemol for me, until tomorrow. (Groan).

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Authors – get your name out there.

Marketing a book is one of the hardest things to do, especially if you have zero budget to spend on advertising. There are, of course, the usual media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, etc and yes, they’re great, but of course any posts you make may become lost amongst the many other similar “adverts” on there.

However, there is a solution. Authorsdb have a database where a writer’s work can be registered for free. This allows the reader to browse and locate all kinds of books for their reading pleasure. The website itself is sleek and professional and easy to navigate and best of all, it’s free. There are competitions, with the opportunity to win free advertising and much, much more.

So why not check it out. It only takes a few minutes. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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Three years and counting!

My blog is three years old today and boy, how time’s flown.  405 posts, 10 categories, 1,304 tags, 1,387 comments and a million squillion spams.

A huge thank you to everyone who’s commented, liked and followed me on this epic journey, I’m hugely grateful.

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