September Newsletter

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Welcome Everyone, to September's newsletter

It has been a month of coming to terms with things here at the Steam Factory, but also a time for a little self care, the two of which I find to be intrinsically linked.

No preamble this month. Let's just get into it.

Round, And Round, And Round We Go

As well as completing my fiftieth straight day of an hour of yoga a day, I also went on another nice long hike. Although this time I didn't go up, but around.

A circumnavigation of Derwent Water was just what the doctor ordered, although if I'm honest it caused me a few aches and pains. I haven't been hiking as much as I normally do, so five hours of walking proved to be quite a challenge. But a good challenge, if you know what I mean.

This was part of the self care I mentioned. It's good to leave everything behind for a while and just walk. (Although you can never leave everything behind can you. To quote that bloke from The Flying Doctors who was in Mad Max 3, "Remember! No matter where you go, there you are.")

One of the things I was trying to get away from was doubt. Feedback is coming in for Dexter & Sinister, and one of the reviews has stuck with me. Basically, it questioned the structure of the book, and how long it takes for Dexter and John Sinister to team up, suggesting that it should have happened sooner (a fact which I struggled with whilst writing the book).

I won't bore you with my complicated thoughts on the issue, suffice it to say that that one review had me thinking I should do an abridged version of Dexter & Sinister, to get rid of everything that is "irrelevant", and cut right to the chase. Or, to put it another way, I allowed one review to send me from happy to sad, a situation which I think you'll agree is sub-optimal.

I'm not going to change the book, that would be insane, but is has taught me to try and maintain a little perspective. You can't give anyone's feedback too much weight, otherwise it will crush you. Or, to put it another way, 'Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone's got one, and they all stink.'

News from the Steam Factory

Book two of Dexter & Sinister is under way. I've outlined the plot and written the first page, which is a good start in my opinion.

I'm approaching this one slightly different to the first. I've done a detailed timeline from each characters' point of view, which I'm going to go through from beginning to end writing all the most interesting parts until the whole story is told.

Now that might seem a bit obvious but it's new to me. It's very much the Terry Pratchett method, which I mentioned in my previous newsletter, cutting from one location to another rapidly to keep things interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes, although I can tell you now that the book already makes much more sense to me doing it this way.

Last Saturday I took part in Humber SSF's first online meet up, in which I got to do a couple of readings from Dexter & Sinister, as well as hear some readings from other authors, all of whom were writing very different stories to mine.

It was an interesting experience, made all the more fun by my laptop crapping out on me five minutes before going live. I had to do it on my desktop computer, in a cold dark room that smelled faintly of feet. But still, it was fun to be a part of, and my thanks to Shellie Horst for organising it and inviting me to participate. Much appreciated.

My apologies for not letting you guys know it was happening. I'm still new to this newsletter thing, so I forget sometimes to advertise up and coming events. I'll try and do better next time.

What I've Been Reading

I've been reading a number of things this month, but the two I want to mention are Peter Pan by JM Barrie, and To The End Of The World, by Leo McBride, from the anthology Tales From The Pirate's Cove.

Both are well written and enjoyable, but it's not the writing I want to talk about, it's the character description. Or, to be precise, just how little character description you can get away with.

Now it makes sense that the physical descriptions in both of these are glossed over somewhat. One is a children's book and the other is a short story. Kids don't really care what kind of trousers someone is wearing, and describing someone's appearance in other than broad strokes is pointless in a short story. You just don't have the time

But it's interesting to see that neither of these tales suffers because of it. Give a reader something to hang their hat on, like Mrs Darlings "sweet mocking mouth that had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner", or tell us that "The slavers had taken [Silent Sam's] tongue. He'd taken plenty of their lives since" and they get an idea of the person, without the need to tell us what they look like. We can fill in the blanks from context.

If I tell you that 'Mrs Winterbotham was a dour, matronly woman, with an affinity for licquorice and a dislike of autumn because the colours did not compliment her complexion whatsoever', and it creates an image in your mind. I don't need to tell you what she is wearing, unless she is wearing something distinctive or relevant to the story.

The point is, a little detail goes a long way. As long as writers give us a strong sense of the person within, they can gloss over what the person looks like and nobody will mind. They might even thank them, in fact. I dunno about you, but I've gotten bored with reading about a character's clothes before now.

NB: The one bit where this theory falls down is cosplay. I put detailed descriptions in Dexter & Sinister not because it needed them, but because I hope to see people dressed up as the characters one day, and without people producing detailed art to show people what the characters look like, my verbal descriptions are all the cosplayers will have to go on.

And there you have it. A lot to digest this month, but hopefully you've found it of interest.

There's a new blog post up, explaining in great detail

How A Book Cover Is Made

. Check it out if you're into that kind of thing. There's lots of cool pictures!

Best of luck in the coming month to you all. See you in October.

Toodle-pip for now.

Keith