Who Is Roland Clarke?

August 19, 2013 by Roland Clarke

INDIE BLOG PARTY Post 1: Introducing Myself

For this first post in the Indie Block Party, I will try to introduce myself to those readers joining this Grand Tour.

Although I started writing stories when I was a kid and tried to get short stories published in my late teens-early twenties, I have to be honest and say that I never saw myself as any sort of writer until I was much older.

I flirted with journalism in my early twenties but drifted into equestrian photography, then fruit & veg selling, then the TV & film industry. So I was forty when I returned to journalism and my equestrian articles got regularly published in various magazines. When after ten amazing years I had to retire due to ill health, multiple sclerosis, I turned my remaining energy to finishing my first novel, an equestrian mystery called ‘Spiral of Hooves’ – first in the Chasseur series.

Horses have remained a theme, especially as I have just outlined Book 2 in the Chasseur series, ‘Tortuous Terrain’. In other WIPs there are horses but in secondary or minor roles. There’s even one who can fold time & space…

All my current writing tends to be mysteries but in some cases with a touch of fantasy or supernatural. My reading covers crime and fantasy as does my TV and film viewing. Not surprising then that I try to combine them.

My spare time is spent playing Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games – from Lord of the Rings Online to current favourite Age of Conan Unchained.

My blog ‘Writing Wings’ is somewhat erratic, appearing when MS doesn’t bog me down with pain and exhaustion. I have to be inspired to write or I get very depressed with what I produce. The blogs aim is to track my experiences as a struggling fledgling writer. Hopefully there are a few gems in the blogs although I don’t profess to be an authority – those can be found on the Links page.

For other facts and dreams see About Me where there are links to Interviews by other writers.

For other Indie Block blogs visit: http://felwetzig.com/indie-block-party/

NORFOLK ADVENTURE

August 14, 2013 by Roland Clarke

My wife Juanita and I went for a wonderful weekend away. Read about our trip here…..

THE DUSKWEALD

We were invited to go to Norfolk for the weekend of August 10 – 12, 2013 with Steve and Jo Hackett…….now just to clear the air here let me tell you who these people are……….

Steve Hackett is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. He gained prominence as a member of the British progressive rock group Genesis, which he joined in 1970 and left in 1977 to pursue a solo career.

Jo Hackett is my husband, Roland Clarke’s ex-wife….I think it is lovely that two people who shared their lives for a time can look past whatever troubles caused them to drift apart and be friends……and both Steve and Jo are the best people anyone can be friends with.

Now that the air is cleared on to the story of our little outing…….

Steve and Jo came and picked us up from our house on Saturday the 10th of August at…

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Indie Block Party

August 10, 2013 by Roland Clarke

On August 19^th I will be embarking on a new venture for me. Taking part in a Writing Blog tour of sorts. Not sure what will happen but I am looking forward to the adventure. I suspect that if anything I will learn more about my writing and I hope that many other people will learn more about me and the words I create. I have already started preparing for it since I am not used to Blogging every day… but then you all know that if you follow this Blog. It’s been useful already as it has been a chance to interrogate one of my characters – Carly Tanner in ‘Spiral of Hooves’

Anyway, I invite you to join me from August 19^th-30^th for the Indie Block Party. To learn more read the following, copied from the official site:

Writing doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavor. Join us for the Indie Block Party to meet your writing “neighbors.”

Participants will have the opportunity to share a little about themselves and their writing, while getting to know the other like-minded crazies that make up the Indie Writing

World.

Rules

Register for the blog hop using the Linky at the bottom of the post.
Post all 4 posts for the week during the dates specified. So, week 1 posts must be up between August 19 and 24, and week 2 posts must go up between August 25 and 30. And you don’t have to be intimidated that there are so many posts, just write whatever comes to you–it doesn’t have to be long at all.
Make sure that somewhere on your blog, there is a contact form or email address so that the person before you on the linky list can contact you with your interview questions. It is a good idea in general from authors to have a visible contact page. (More on this later.)
If you decide not to participate, please leave a comment so your name can be removed from the linky.
The hop is about meeting and supporting other Indies and learning about their work.

Week 1
August 19-24

Post 1: Introduce Yourself

Ideas to get you started:

Why did you start writing?
How long have you been writing?
What are your favorite genre?
What is your blog about?
What do you do when you’re not writing?

Post 2: Introduce your WIP

Ideas:

How did the idea originate?
Share the blurb.
Share the first paragraph.
Share the cover, if you have one.
Are you plotting or pantsing?
Is any of the novel inspired by personal experiences?
How far along is the project?

Post 3: Interview one of your characters

A good interview is usually 6-8 questions.

Sample Questions:

What was your life like growing up?
Before your story began, what were your hopes for the future? What changed that?
How would you describe your personality?
How would you describe your looks?
What’s your greatest talent?
Who are your closest friends?
Who do you love?
Who do you hate, and why?
What do you think is going to happen next?
When you were a child, what was the worst thing you did and how did your parents punish you for it?
What would you do if you had no electricity for a week?
Who is your favorite author?
If you could only listen to 1 album for the rest of your life what would it be?
What prank or crime would you most likely pull/commit?
What do you collect?
What are your 3 most prized possessions?
Who is your favorite superhero?
What about you is heroic?
What do you like about people?
What was your family like?
What is your first memory?

Post 4: Interview one of your neighbors

This is where the importance of the contact page comes up! You’ll be interviewing the author who signed up on the linkey after you. The linkey will close at midnight ET on August 16, so the last person signed up at this time will interview the first person–Fel Wetzig (yep, that’s me).

A good interview is usually 6-8 questions.

Sample Questions:

What books have most influenced your life most?
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
What book are you reading now?
What 3 words describe the author you want to be?
If you could be any character from any book, who would you be?
Paperback, hardcover, or eBook?
When and why did you begin writing?
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
What inspired you to write your first book?
Do you have a specific writing style?
How much of your writing time is purely research?
How old were you when you started writing? What did you write?
What’s the BEST writing advice you ever received?
What is your biggest writing weakness, and what do you think you need to change to work on it?
Do you have a regular writing routine?

Week 2
August 25-30

Post 5: What are you currently reading?

Give us the title, blurb, how you discovered the book, and anything else you feel like sharing.

Post 6: Top 5 books

What are the top 5 books you absolutely love?

Post 7: Writing Tips

Share your most helpful writing tips and advice. What do you know now that you wished you had known when you started writing?

Feel free to include links to articles you’ve found particularly helpful.

Post 8: Social Media & Networking Tips

Again, what do you know now that you wished you had known when you started? What social networks do you prefer? Are there groups or communities that you recommend?

What are your major DOs and DON’Ts for the social media world?

To learn more, see who is already taking part and to join the party go to:

http://felwetzig.com/indie-block-party/

SIXTY ~ THE MAGIC NUMBER

August 7, 2013 by Roland Clarke

Sixty seems like an achievement and part of me wishes it was counted in books rather than years. Yet I am thankful that there have been that many years.

Another milestone decade has crept up on me and I sit here wondering where all those years went. What have I achieved? Were the years wasted or worthwhile?

On the work front, pre-Multiple Sclerosis, I had a failed photography business, an organic fruit & veg wholesale business that seemed to turn to compost – but was decades ahead of its time – and a TV & Film company that lost way too much money. On the plus side I had equestrian articles and photos published, and the two equestrian competitions that I kick-started are both thriving even though I have had to retire through ill-health.

What happens next? Not retirement exactly, since some scribbling of sorts has continued, even if I’ve reached six-zero. Hopefully there is time yet to finish what I’ve started, but curiosity asks the question: Do writers die clutching a pen or a keyboard… or a mouse?

Of course I’ve already been in my 60th year for a while – if you want to be technical. Some people were claiming I was in my 50^th year when I turned 49. Great!

After six decades what am I thinking about? Am I planning a great announcement? Perhaps, although what has really changed, is I am still learning to write. But it doesn’t help having a body that is in need of a retro-fit or something. MS does have aspects that warrant it being called the MonSter.

What do I want for my birthday? A new body? Maybe more time to get things done. But in practical terms I’ve decided that my life is pretty good as it is. I’ve found my soul mate and inspiration – and she is the most precious part of my world now. We have a great home with two adorable cats, even when they interrupt our play or scratch the new furniture.

And the launch of my first book, ‘Spiral of Hooves’ grows nearer every day. First of sixty perhaps. It would be nice to envisage a row of leather bound books on a dark wood shelf in a paneled library. But the reality is more likely to be an e-reader with at most a dozen titles. However, there are only seven titles in the pipeline, including ‘Spiral of Hooves’, and although first drafts only take a month or three, the editing process takes ages = months stretching to years. Better get revising then.

Perhaps I need to re-evaluate my progress at the end of the next decade. Seems like a plan – along with the bookshelf.

Antique Books (Photo credit: Robert Benner Sr.)

Life is simpler on the back roads (countryclassphotography.wordpress.com)
Innovative Multiple Sclerosis Treatments May Be On The Way, Thanks To New Nerve Cell Findings (medicaldaily.com)
Top 10 Myths About Multiple Sclerosis (abcnews.go.com)
8 Fulfilling Careers For Retirees (businessinsider.com)
Study: Later retirement may help prevent dementia (jsonline.com)
Ten Bad Reasons to Avoid Retirement (humor.gunaxin.com)

Happy Birthday, Brother

July 24, 2013 by Roland Clarke

This was love so moving and profoundly expressed that I needed to re-blog this post….

Time Exchange

July 17, 2013 by Roland Clarke

English: timeline example (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does your favourite book capture a sense of time? Does time play out slowly or race along? How does an experienced writer catch such an intangible element as time in words?

Pacing is a key element to crafting a novel and wiser people have addressed it much better than I can in this beginner’s blog. However, I can address the lessons that I have learnt in my sporadic journey.

When I first started writing my first novel ‘Spiral of Hooves’, I resorted to simply inserting the date at the beginning of each scene or chapter. But although that works if the writer builds more subtle temporal clues onto this, I think for me it became a crutch. Although I had an initial timeline to guide me, I made the mistake of straying too far from it in order to make incidents occur in sequence. So when I was asked recently by my editor to check my timeline, I realised it was hopelessly out of date. Fortunately the juggling needed to bring scenes and chapters into line with the correct timeline was not too complicated, and the novel benefited.

As for the actual time scale of the story, that went from two years in the initial draft to nine months in the final one, which tightened the pace considerably. Faster pacing seems to make sense for a mystery, although I was never aiming for a thriller-type race against time.

Of course pacing is more than just saying: ‘Next morning’ or ‘Two hours later’ and I have tried to vary what happens in scenes and the words I have used. For instance, over the drafts I made better use of the seasonal changes in weather, vegetation and animal life. Keeping dialogue leisurely or snappy depending on the mood has helped I hope, although that will be up to my readers to decide. Have I been too overt by resorting to characters mentioning how many days or hours before a specific event or deadline? Hopefully not and the readers will be caught up in the story.

Using beta readers, after about the third draft, has helped assess whether the timeline and pacing worked. Adding an editor into the mix has been invaluable – many thanks Yen, you’ve been great to work with. However, I have had to adapt a few things to an American readership, and explain some of the equestrian terminology. As ‘Spiral of Hooves’ enters the final furlong, I feel that the novel has evolved thanks to the input and the lessons learned. What occurs in the time before publication will be another blog tale.

Animated sequence of a horse pacing. Photos taken by Eadweard Muybridge (died 1904), first published in 1887 at Philadelphia (Animal Locomotion). Animation by Waugsberg, 2006-10-8. (The sequence is set to motion using frames of Human and Animal Locomotion, plate 591, “Pronto” pacing) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For other drafted novels, I have tried to keep a closer eye on the timeline as I work on the plot. However, when I get round to editing them I need to take care that I keep the timeline updated. I also need to evolve the date/day references into more subtle and clever ways of showing the passage of time that work with the pace of the plot.

I’ve just outlined the sequel to ‘Spiral of Hooves’, which has the working title of ‘Tortuous Terrain’. Its timeline was complicated to plot due its background against two different equestrian competitions in the USA. Hopefully, as I write the first draft I can find the right words to capture time as well as the setting and characters. There’s an historical mystery in the wings too, set in both 1812 and the present day – ‘Seeking A Knife’. That presents an interesting challenge, but sometime in the future.

As for the blog title ‘Time Exchange’ that was Inspiration Monday – http://bekindrewrite.com/2013/07/15/inspiration-monday-look-at-me-now/. Not the requirement, but the title seemed to fit this piece: an exchange of experiences from me to you.

Now it’s your turn: what do you find gives inspiring writing a sense of time?