Author Archives: Roland Clarke

Brysur Fel Morgrig ~ How Industrious Are You?

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Today is the first Wednesday of March so I’m blogging as part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Whether it proves to be an industrious day, remains to be seen. But last month was.

First, a clue to the Welsh I learnt in April – I now know at least four phrases in a language that we hear all around us, if we go outside our compound.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?                                   Henry David Thoreau

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Looking back, I’ve been busy all my life, but often that rushing around has been evasion. I had things to do, but often found other distractions. With my writing that can be detrimental, whether it is playing Facebook games, watching Soaps, or researching without direction.

However, in February I found some balance and managed to write a satisfying amount, mostly some of the chapters of “Seeking A Knife” featuring my Goth detective, DS Sparkle Lodge. I was even editing/rereading scenes when I started each day. The secret, for me, was not to set myself an impossible daily goal, and to treat the zero days as part of the flow.

That’s what we have to do, stand back from impossible targets and find the balance in our lives between work and play. That balancing act will vary from day to day, but over a greater period of time pan out and hopefully yield amazing results.

Maybe that isn’t the way the ants achieve great things, but there will be days when we are as “brysur fel morgrig” – “busy as ants”.

Image courtesy of SweetCrisis at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of SweetCrisis at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. This is my attempt to talk about my doubts and the fears that I am trying to conquer. I want to be encouraging, and by posting perhaps this is a way of saying keep striving. Visit IWSG and some other great bloggers, not all as insecure but great fun.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the March 4 posting of the IWSG are Chemist Ken, Suzanne Sapseed, and Shannon Lawrence!

A blank canvas…..

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This is my wonderful wife and our awesomely, evolving home.

snowlass's avatarTHE DUSKWEALD

In a weeks time it will have been a year since Roland and I left our humble beginnings in England to begin our new adventure in Wales, UK.  It has been a very interesting journey for both of us and we have both learned and grown in the last year.  We have made new friends and lost old friends along the way and there are several who have stuck by us through it all.   This is how our adventure started:

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and how it has progressed over the last year:

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Although there are some plantings, statues and garden structures it is time to do more, to finish this blank canvas and bring some colour to an otherwise dull painting.

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We had a garden designer named Tilly Jones come and draw up some plans for this new garden of ours and I do have to say that I have…

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Parallel Plotting Predicament

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Plotting was simple with previous draft novels, even when there were two interweaving plot arcs. But how did I end up with three parallel ones? More important how should I be writing this novel?

Draft blurb for “Seeking a Knife”: Welsh Detective Sergeant Sparkle Lodge suspects that the death of a researcher is linked to the priceless 200 year-old Memoirs sent to Nadine Palmour, a Native American journalist. Is Nadine descended from the author of the Memoirs, an English naval officer, Talcott Wendell? Is the theft of his naval dirk in 1920 a cold case that has to be resurrected?

Three POVs in three separate settings, two separated by location – North Wales and Texas – and the other by historical time – the memoirs are from the War of 1812, between the USA and the British in Canada.

I recognise that there are three different areas of research, three sets of character sketches, but are three outlines that gradually weave together? I had initially planned to do all the research, character sketches, and then one interweaving outline of the whole novel. I have a rough outline so know how the novel should unfold – and a time line for the present day arcs. But the great plan hasn’t worked out beyond those elements.

My first POV character, a Welsh Goth in the North Wales Poice  arrested me. Who wouldn’t want to develop a character based on Abi in NCIS? So I have her sketched out, and a few lines on those she interacts with.  Worst of all I have written around 10,000 words that cover the first third of the novel from her POV.

Do I stop? Do I continue with her story, until she meets the Native American? Or should I just work on the parts that inspire me?

Pauley Perrette aka Abi

Pauley Perrette aka Abi

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. This is my attempt to talk about my doubts and the fears that I am trying to conquer. I want to be encouraging, and by posting perhaps this is a way of saying keep striving. Visit IWSG and some other great bloggers, not all as insecure but great fun.
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for this February 4 posting of the IWSG are Gwen Gardner, Dolorah, Sarah Foster, and M. Pax!

Bollywood Style

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2014 was the year when I read more books than previous years. Two of my favorite reads were the first two parts of Susan Kaye Quinn’s Dharian Affairs Trilogy  -Third Daughter and Second Daughter. In 2015 I plan to read even more and one of the highlights is sure to be First Daughter.

I’ve used Indian settings but not with Bollywood Style – maybe there is some Steampunk creeping in. Anway, I’m pleased to be supporting this week’s Bollywood Style Giveway, in which Susan is celebrating with fellow author Sonali Dev. Over to them:

Romance and Intrigue: Bollywood Style Giveaway

Something Bollywood Going On Here

Sonali Dev and Susan Kaye Quinn met in a most unusual place: Library Journal’s Top 10 E-Romance List for 2014. Sonali’s A Bollywood Affair and Susan’s Third Daughter both made the list with their Bollywood-themed romances – something that was so cool, it cried out to be celebrated!

Scroll down to win some great Bollywood-themed prizes!

Contemporary and Steampunk Bollywood Romance

https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-UZ8iqWxDwoI%2FVK82HPki1oI%2FAAAAAAAAI1g%2FQ4HwaC3OtI8%2Fs1600%2Fdownload.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim her.

Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naïve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. Open-hearted yet complex, she’s trying to reconcile her independence with cherished traditions. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.

https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-vmNIrMfCFk0%2FVK83DQZryEI%2FAAAAAAAAI1s%2FSzmLBKrdrFs%2Fs1600%2FThirdDaughter_CVR_XSML.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs #1) by Susan Kaye Quinn

The Third Daughter of the Queen wants to her birthday to arrive so she’ll be free to marry for love, but rumors of a new flying weapon may force her to accept a barbarian prince’s proposal for a peace-brokering marriage. Desperate to marry the charming courtesan she loves, Aniri agrees to the prince’s proposal as a subterfuge in order to spy on him, find the weapon, and hopefully avoid both war and an arranged marriage to a man she does not love.

Third Daughter is the first book in the Dharian Affairs Trilogy (Third Daughter, Second Daughter, First Daughter). This steampunk-goes-to-Bollywood (Bollypunk!) romance takes place in an east-indian-flavored alternate world filled with skyships, saber duels, and lots of royal intrigue. And, of course, kissing.

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Romance and Intrigue: Bollywood Style

This short Q&A with Sonali and Susan talks about marrying for love and writing romance!

Q: Marrying for love is a modern, and in some ways Western, concept, but arranged marriages have a long and complicated history. How does your novel tackle the subject of arranged marriage?

Sue: Third Daughter is set in a fantasy world, but it’s a blend of cultures in the real one, including being an analog to India (both current day and some of the past). In the Dharian Affairs world, royal marriages have a history of being arranged for political purposes, but the general population of the countries marry for love. This leaves the titular Daughters with varying conflicts between marrying for duty and marrying for love – some embracing their arranged marriages, some fighting against it. The marriage dynamics of the three daughters in the trilogy (Third Daughter, Second Daughter, First Daughter) drive much of the story – along with political intrigue and skyships, of course!

Sonali: In India where I grew up arranged marriages are still very much a part of the fabric of the culture. Having said that, one of the most interesting and unique things about Indian society is how diverse it is within itself. While you still have communities and families who will give the marrying person absolutely no say in whom they marry there are those who don’t believe their parents and families have any say when it comes to whom they choose to marry or live with, and then there is the rest of the sizable population who falls somewhere between those two belief systems. In A Bollywood Affair, Mili is from a tiny village from a very orthodox family and it is perfectly natural that her family would arrange her marriage. She would expect that. It wouldn’t even strike a girl from her background that she could choose for herself. The age at which she was married isn’t usual, though, but there is a reason why her grandmother gets her married that young. As for her being in love with her husband, again, the conditioning to be devoted to your husband is so ingrained in the culture that it would be strange if someone like Mili didn’t love someone she believed was her husband.

Q: Whether set in a fantasy world or the modern one, romance is romance! There are many romance tropes – star-crossed lovers, lovers thrown together by circumstance, enemies turned lovers – what kind(s) of romance tropes does your novel contain?

Sue: My books are really a blend of romance and adventure, although the first book is a classic “lovers thrown together by circumstance” as Aniri (the Third Daughter) goes undercover in accepting a marriage proposal from the barbarian prince in the north in order to spy on him and determine if his country truly has the rumored flying machine that would upend the political dynamics in both their countries.

Sonali: Although I didn’t set out to write it that way, several readers have pointed out that A Bollywood Affair is a Worldly Rake and an Ingenue Virgin trope. And now that I think about it, there’s truth to that.

Q: Are you planning on writing more romances in this story-world? If so, tell us about it!

Sue: The Dharian Affairs trilogy is complete, but I’ve enjoyed writing in this east-Indian steampunk fantasy romance world so much, I’ve decided to do a follow-on trilogy from the point of view of a new character—a female tinker who has a grand invention that may change the world, but also is caught between the spy she might love and the spy she can’t resist. Those books likely won’t be written for a year or two, but I will cycle back to writing in this world in the future!

Sonali: The Bollywood Bride comes out next year and it’s the story of a Bollywood star who comes home to Chicago after ten years to escape a scandal in Mumbai and comes face to face with the man she betrayed for stardom. And then there are two more stories I’m working on in the same series. Which isn’t a series in terms of continuity or overlapping characters but because the stories are set in the same world and either the hero or the heroine work in Bollywood.

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WIN BOLLYWOOD PRIZES

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Paperback of Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs #1)

The Dharian Affairs Trilogy in Ebook

2 Paperback copies of A Bollywood Affair

Handwoven Pashmina shawl from India

Sticker Henna Tattoos

Indian bangles (bracelets)

(all physical prizes are US ONLY; ebook is INTERNATIONAL)

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Wisholute or Chaos?

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This is my first post of 2015 and my first Insecure Writer’s Support Group post of the year. Before I tackle the resolution chestnut, I have to introduce myself. Guess I need to update my About Me page… at some point.

Until the MonSter called multiple sclerosis swiped me down, I was a freelance equestrian journalist, and photographer. I was diagnosed with MS in January 2000 and by 2005 I retired, unable to meet any deadlines. My second wife, Juanita is now my understanding and put-upon carer, and we live in Harlech, North Wales, with a brilliant view of Snowdon.

When the MS is behaving, and my pain is calm, I write fiction. My first novel, ‘Spiral of Hooves’ was published in December 2013, and I have various projects on the go.

First Snow on Snowdon ~ Juanita Clarke

First Snow on Snowdon ~ Juanita Clarke

So why ‘wisholute’?

My writer friend Ailsa Abraham coined this clever word as an alternative to ‘resolution’. Don’t we all manage to fulfil just a fraction of our resolutions? In many cases, they are closer to ‘wishes’ driven by intent of some sort. Great for Insecure writers like me. So I don’t make them – well not often.

My simple ‘wisholute’ was “Find a Brit publisher and finish one tale…” by which I meant, my US publisher is great for my equestrian series, but being in the UK I would like to find a similar Brit publisher. And my insecurity kicks in when it comes to my next publishing step.

Do I chance that my ‘Gossamer Flames’ saga is worthy of beta readers? Are there any out there that will want to read it?

Should I focus instead on revising ‘Fates Maelstrom’ and re-locating it in North Wales?

Do I suppress the urge to write yet another first draft to put in the bottom oven to simmer?

Well, I’m taking part in the 100k in 100 days Challenge and have a loose strategy of edit-create-revise: on the days when I need to Blog/vent/rant etc I do; on the days when I get inspired to review one of the books I managed to read in 2014, I do; when I get the urge to bring new characters alive in ‘Seeking A Knife’, I do; and I intend to make those short stories ready for the brave beta readers out there, wherever.

And for my reading I am multi-tasking too – I have three books on the go, and just acquired one set locally, to get my head ready for that revision I mentioned.

Trouble is, that insecurity might be feeding the multi-tasking. Should that be chaos? Not if we are creating words and worlds for valued readers. As IWSG says, “Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!”

Dewy Cobweb ~ by Norman Hyett

Dewy Cobweb ~ by Norman Hyett

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The awesome co-hosts for the January 7 posting of the IWSG will be Elizabeth Seckman, Lisa Buie-Collard, Chrys Fey, and Michelle Wallace!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Please visit others in the group and connect with the awesome writers out there. Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

 

2014 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Many thanks to all my followers, and special thanks to those who commented on my erratic posts, both here and on Facebook.

Will try to do better in 2015 despite the MonSter, which made the Christmas break tough.

May 2015 bring you all what you need to keep on reaching for those dreams.