Tag Archives: writing

Busy times ahead…

01 Friday Feb 2013

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Since we are at the start of Feburary, I thought it was a good time for a bit of a recap and a look ahead as to what is to come. You may not have been aware of it, but January has been a busy month for me. I’ve been beavering away in the promotion cave (as Erica Hayes calls it) and getting some good results…thecurse_BBWauthors_03

First off, I have managed to get my first review on Goodreads thanks to the Making Connections giveaway offer. You can see the review here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16225234-transitions

I am still waiting for several other reviews from that giveaway but as we are still well within the 4-6 week deadline I am not expecting them yet. I am hoping that they will all be as good as the ones I have had so far but I realistically know that this is unlikely.

Secondly, my new facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles?ref=stream) is doing well with a grand total of 52 likes, which I consider reasonable but am still hungry for more. I posted my ’50 likes’ picture a few days ago. If you want to know what it is, go like the page! And when I reach 100 likes I will post another…

I also have been answering interview questions for other peoples’ blogs and will post here when those go live. One of them says there is a 12 week backlog of interviews to post so it will be a while before that one appears but as soon as it does I will let you all know so you can read about my deepest, darkest secrets.

As for what is to come, well I have two guest posts lined up for this month already, both looking to promote newly released books. Look out for them on the 6th of Febuaray and the 21st of Feburary. I’ve also scheduled myself for a post on Amwriting.org on the 26th of Feburary but have absolutely no idea what I am going to write about yet. Finally, there is Vampire Month…

Earlier this week, I finalised the list of authors who will be taking part in Vampire month this year and they are an interesting bunch. We have:

Zoe Adams

Aaron Smith

Lynda Bester

Erica Hayes

I look forward to finding out more about them as they answer my questions and produce a guest post for March.

So, there you have it. Lots of things achieved and pending. It’s only the start of the year, I hope the rest of it is as good…

Get a free copy of Transitions for review

14 Monday Jan 2013

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I’ve joined the Making Connections group in Goodreads. It is a community which Transitions-AuthorCopyprovides authors with a way to get in touch with readers who might want to write a review of one of their books.

With this in mind, I have set up a giveaway on that group:

Click here for a link to the Giveaway thread

There are ten free copies of Transitions (any ebook format) up for grabs in this giveaway. All you need do is express an interest on the thread above, leaving your email address and what format you want, and a copy will be sent to you.

In exchange for this, you agree to write a review of the book within 4-6 weeks of receiving it which can be posted anywhere you like (Goodreads is a good start but you can also post on the Amazon page or your own blog) and send me a link to tell me you have done it.

The first ten to post in the thread with the correct details get the free copies. Two of them have already gone out, leaving 8 to go… The group owners moderate everything to make sure it is all fair and above board.

The Making Connections group also has a lot of other cool books up for similar giveaways listed. They are always keen to get more reviewers on board so if you are a Goodreads member, pop along there and sign up.

In a related issue, this is also a reminder that you can now see me on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles

Those of you who use Facebook may want to go to this page and click like…

Wow, three posts in two days. At this rate I’ll be posting more than John Scalzi…

Exciting new things for the New Year

06 Sunday Jan 2013

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAJust before New Year, I promised you all new and exciting news and you may or may not be pleased to know that this is the post in which I announce it!

If you pop over to http://www.dalascelles.co.uk/index.html you will see that there is a website all about me. It is all shiny and new (still got the plastic wrapping on all the seats and has that wonderful ‘new website smell’). You can find my bio there as well as links and extracts for all the stuff I have worked on and am currently working on. I’ve also included a links page for some of the wonderful people I have met in my time as a writer. If you think you need to be on that list, feel free to contact me to be added…

I am still getting used to this whole idea of having a website all about me. I blame Judy Bagshaw for persuading me that I needed on and Rebekah Harrington for also poking me about it. I especially blame the wonderful Wednesday for doing all the design work (she makes a wonderful photographic model too) and the very helpful people of 5quidhost who are the hosts of the site. I hope you are all ashamed of the horrors you have helped to bring to fruition 🙂

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

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As Christmas ends and the New Year looms, everyone inevitably begins to think about things like resolutions and reviews of past deeds. My intention in this post is to look at this blog and consider what has been successful in the past year.

The Ten Most popular posts

[News From the Spirit World] Vampires More stats 488
[AW Blog Chain] Zompocalypse More stats 385
The Avengers UK: Crossover universes More stats 198
A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio More stats 155
About More stats 130
Teaching: Behaviour management on BBC Breakfast More stats 108
[AW blog chain] Otherworldly More stats 97
Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans) More stats 91
[AW Blog chain] Rainy Days More stats 85
Weird Worlds [AW Blog chain for June] More stats 82

This table shows the most popular posts for the year. I have excluded the most popular post (at over 2,800 views) because that was ‘homepage/archive’ which basically means that someone viewed the first page. It is interesting that the most popular post this year was one I did as a link to News From the Spirit World for an article I wrote on Vampires. I am guessing that this is due to the overall popularity of Vampires in general. Many of the Absolute Write blog chain posts are also trending in this list which implies that the link from the other blogs in the chain is achieving something. Finally, the Avengers Crossover post and the various Photoshoot posts are perennial favourites that seem to pop up every now and again even months after being posted. Oh, and my ego feels quite pleased that people feel it necessary to view my about page…

Ten Most popular keywords

vampires 280
zombie 98
vampirler 29
avengers meme 17
writer 13
weird worlds 12
zombie lady 12
behaviour management 9
the chosen book review 9
vampire 9

There have been a number of weird and wonderful keywords used over the time this blog has been active. This table shows the most popular ones used. I am sure no one is at all surprised that Vampires come up top, especially given the result of ‘most popular post’. There are also a few variants on that – vampires and vampirler showing up a few times.  Zombie is also a search term which again shows up frequently with a couple of variants – zombie lady being the one shown here. Finally, it is probably no surprise given the popularity of that franchise that the Avengers shows up as the most popular after Vampires and Zombies in this table. The numbers here are obviously less than those for the most popular post because search terms are by their nature more variable.

This table does not show some of the weirdest search terms used to find this blog because most of those were one offs… ‘Cute Zombie Girl’ and ‘Hot Sexy Zombie’ both came up 3 times (with other variants in there as well), ‘Ninfa Goddess’ another 3 times (though I am not convinced it was not Ninfa herself doing this search out of ego…) and ‘discipline suit’ came up twice. No idea what a ‘discipline suit’ is but I am assuming that search led them to my tirade about behaviour management… There was also a weird one ‘benedict cumberbatch as lascelles’ which I assume must have been someone searching for information about the upcoming Strange and Norrell adaptation in which I think Mr Cumberbatch would indeed make a great Lascelles though I have no idea if he has been cast or not (or if anyone has been cast in this particular adaptation…).If anyone hears about any casting news for Strange and Norrell, please feel free to let me know.

Top Ten Countries Viewing the Blog

United Kingdom 1,971
United States FlagUnited States 1,968
Canada FlagCanada 308
Australia FlagAustralia 228
India FlagIndia 91
Philippines FlagPhilippines 73
Germany FlagGermany 68
Puerto Rico FlagPuerto Rico 52
France FlagFrance 51
Indonesia FlagIndonesia 49

Naturally, UK and US dominate this chart in the top two positions here with my fans in both countries vying for top spot and ending with a very close call (only three views in it in the end). This obviously comes from me being British and my books being largely published in the US. I also have a good mix of people from both countries on my facebook and twitter accounts (both of which get links to here posted) and a lot of US people come to me through the Absolute Write forums. Australia and Canada are on here for similar reasons – Australia due to the many fans of Rebekah Harrington and Canada due to Skyla Dawn Cameron and Judy Bagshaw’s occasional posts on this blog. It is also nice to see other countries on here to give the place a proper international feel with places such as the Philippines and Indonesia showing up there.

So, that is a brief overview of the state of this blog as the year comes to a close. I’ve found some interesting trends here and hope to find many more in 2013 when I repeat this process again. Of course, this year has been good for a few other things. In this year I managed to get involved in the creation of an entire world background for a fantasy wargame called Realm (today is your last chance to enter the competition to win some miniatures…) and also to finally release Transitions onto an unsuspecting public after many many years in ‘publication hell’. I’ve also managed to organise two successful photoshoots by bringing different people with different exceptional talents together then sitting back and watching them work magic.

In 2013 I have other plans afoot and hope to be able to announce other fun things very soon…

Location, Location, Location… Part Two: The University of Birmingham

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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A few days ago, I posted about Marsden Beach and Arbeia Roman fort. Now it is time for part two of my blog posts about locations I used in Transitions.

The university is where the contemporary action of the story happens. It also happens

The blue plaque at Sarehole Mill

to be one of the (several) universities I attended and worked at in my time as a scientist. I needed a university for my characters to be attending and it seemed a convenient one to use because I knew it so well. There were other advantages too.

One was the association with J.R.R Tolkien. As pointed out in the story, Tolkien did live for some time in the West Midlands (Kings Heath, now a suburb of Birmingham), spent a lot of time visiting places like Clent and Lickey Hills (both places we used to walk our dog) and attended school at King Edward’s school. Said school is right next to the university and does indeed have a good view of the iconic tower which was potentially the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc in Isengard (Sarehole mill being another inspiration, not to mention the dark smoke of the nearby black country). This provided a wonderful opportunity for two of the characters to be pedantic geeks.

The clock tower of the University of Birmingham

The tower itself was also a great location to use for the above scene because it looks so awesome – a huge, red brick clock tower in the middle of a courtyard made from similar red brick university buildings. Ever since I arrived in Birmingham this tower, which is visible from quite a distance away, always struck me as an ideal place for an epic battle between two powerful beings.

Of course… I use it in Transitions for a fight between two students, one drunk the other possessed. It’s hardly epic, more comedic as the drunken student is hardly competent in combat and the possessed one does not care and it ends with a piece of pedantry (like all the best arguments). However, one day I will use the tower again and this time it will be even more epic…

In the university I namecheck a number of lecturers. None of these are based on lecturers I know, though some have traits which some lecturers I have had may have shared. The names of the lecturers are, however, those of friends of mine. Professor Abigail Bath is named after two friends, one a costume maker (who also took my profile photo on this site) and the other a Doctor of History (who is also acknowledged in The Curse due to her expertise in Witchcraft). Professor Hayes is also named from a friend of mine. Not, as you may think, Ninfa Hayes (who is a friend but one I hadn’t met when I was writing Transitions) but the man she married. Finally, Dr. Gallop is named after my father in law. I do feel I have to apologise to at least two of the people namechecked here as both of the lecturers they name are not shown as the best of the breed.

The final scenes of the book centre on Selly Oak which is a place with a lot of student accomodation just outside the university. Specifically, a pub called the Bristol Pear

The Bristol Pear Pub, Selly Oak

which was for a while the home of the University Goth Society’s infamous ‘Friday Night Goth Shite’ nights (or FNGS for short). I tried to portray one of these nights as accurately as possible, including the description of one of the DJs. Unfortunately, FNGS (which was later joined by SNGS, no prizes for guessing what that means) is no longer based at the Pear but when I left Birmingham it was still going strong at a cocktail bar closer to the city centre. It may still be going somewhere. I like to think that someone in Birmingham can still wander into a small pub or cocktail bar somewhere and still find a goth night run by a student society.

So, there is a short tour of some of the Birmingham locations used in Transitions. Next up will be Aqua Sulis.

Note, unlike the previous article, none of the photographs here were taken by me. All credit for them belongs with the original artists who took them.

Location, Location, Location… Part One: Arbeia Roman Fort

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

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A week ago I was at one of the somewhat irregular meetings of our relatively newlyformed writers’ group (which has yet to gain an official name but is sort of soldiering on under the name of ‘the Tea Society’). Among the many discussions and random witterings, including some interesting ideas regarding World Book Night which I will share with you later, we got onto a discussion about location photographs. Later that week, during the launch of Oblivion Storm, R.A Smith opened a thread which was a ‘virtual tour of London’ using Google Earth, Streetview and Panaramio to showcase locations from the book.

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

So this got me to thinking. When writing Transitions I used a few locations which were familiar to me and as part of the research for the book I took a number of photos to get a better feel for the locations. I was also, at the time, thinking about the cover of the book and what a cover artist may want with regards to inspiration if not actual images they could use to mock up a decent composition.

cave1

One of the many caves aong Marsden beach

I had largely considered that to be that. The photos I had taken were between me and my cover artist and have since been left on my Flickr account not doing much. However, during the aforementioned discussion of my writers’s group, Ninfa Hayes mentioned that readers often like to see such things. Thinking about it, I agreed with her so I decided to share some of these location shots with you. There are three main locations discussed in Transitions – Arbeia Roman Fort and the surrounding area, the Roman City of Aqua Sulis ( which became modern day Bath) and the University of Birmingham and surrounding area.

So, this first post is all about Arbeia. This was a fort built by the Romans in 120 AD to

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

act as a resupply depot for Hadrian’s wall. Since the fort was in my hometown it seemed an obvious place to base Gaius Lucius, my Roman character. Of course, there were a number of slight historical issues I had to contend with. Gaius Lucius, for example, is not Arabic like many of the soldiers at Arbeia would have been. Though to be fair, I don’t actually mention his origin so he could well be Arabic. However, throughout the writing of the story I did imagine him as being from Gaul. Another issue is the fact that the fort was founded in 120 AD and I had originally considered the story being set much earlier, perhaps 10 – 30 year after the death of Jesus. Instead, the timing of the fort meant I had to shift my timings to post 120 AD and opted for 123 AD as being not too long after this point. I also flanged over the fact that it is likely the fort in this period was not going to be as well established as is implied in the story. I hope you consider these to be minor issues and also points which you were likely not to have noticed until I pointed them out to you just now… 🙂

A close up of one of the deeper caves

A close up of one of the deeper caves

Of course, Gaius is never seen at the fort. Instead, he is first seen travelling along a beach to find a cave in which a mad old man lives. That beach, in case anyone is interested, was what is now known as Marsden beach. I am not aware of there ever having been mad old wisemen living in caves on Marsden beach but I accept there is a chance there could have been. There have always been rumours of smugglers there in the past , using the caves to hide goods and there is a pub, the Marsden Grotto, which popular rumour has was a place where these smugglers would hang out. I am currently drawing on this in another story which I am in the middle of writing – a sequel to Gods of the Sea. The pub is also said to be haunted (one of the ghosts being that of a notorious smuggler, as it happens) and has been the subject of one of those over the top ‘Britains most haunted’ style shows.  With all of these features, it struck me as a wonderful inspiration for a location where a Roman could meet a mad old Briton for a bit of supernatural advice.

So, there you have it. How Arbeia Roman Fort and Marsden beach inspired the first part of Gaius Lucius’s story in Transitions. In a later entry I will talk about the city of Bath and the University of Birmingham and how they are linked to the story.

Oblivion Storm release

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

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So… today a good friend of mine, Mr R.A Smith (I knew him when he had a name oblivion storn coverrather than just initials) has a book release for a rather excellent novel called Oblivion Storm. I’m telling you all this so you can pop over to the facebook group and let them tell you all about it there. I believe there is a competition in the offing and quotes and all sorts of fun things. There may even be pie.

Well, ok, there won’t be pie but that’s ok because you won’t care about that because there is a fascinating read ahead of you if you do decide to pick up this book.

Stay tuned for a review of the book (I am half way through it at the moment) and other information as this last repetitive day (12/12/12, also a rare occasion when American and UK dates agree…) goes on. You can also check out Mr Smith on https://www.facebook.com/Mister.R.A.Smith. Those of you who have been paying attention will also notice that he is indeed the same Russel Smith involved in editing the content for Realm. You can also check out Oblivion Storm on Goodreads.

In other news, there is something I will be announcing sometime over the next few days which may be of interest to you all. Well, it is of interest to me anyway so regardless of what you think of it, I shall announce it anyway. Keep your eyes peeled on this space for more details. I am merely waiting for a report from some busy little elves (well, one busy little elf) that certain things are in place…

Realm fantasy warfare competition

08 Saturday Dec 2012

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The wonderful people over at Serious Lemon have created a give away for anyone interested in wargaming.

In case you weren’t aware, Realm Fantasy Warfare was a project I got involved in as a2012-06-02 16.24.38 writer. I produced the background based on concepts and ideas provided by the rules writer. The aim was to try to subvert many of the cliches inherent in fantasy settings while still maintaining recognisable races and ideas. I will leave it up to you to decide if we have succeeded in this.

The competition is over a set of miniatures donated by Eureka . The winner can choose either a Vaetari (Elves) or Drogar (Dwarves) set. The second place winner gets the remaining set. The miniatures can also be custom painted for you or left bare for your own painting.

The giveaway details may be found on the Realm Website (http://realmfw.com/giveaway/) but the basics of the competition are:

Two winners will be drawn at random from all entries. The first drawn will have their choice of either the Drogar or Vaetari starter set. The second drawn will receive the remaining set.

 illathynn   To enter the draw, first you will create an original discussion piece online regarding Realm. This is intentionally vague but could include things like a review or a battle report. You might initiate a discussion on a forum regarding a particular aspect of Realm, or you might post a video online discussing the validity of certain game mechanics within Realm.

    Essentially, anything is valid as long as it is discussing Realm and available publicly online.

    To enter, email us the url of the aforementioned content you created. All entries must be in by midnight, Monday, December 31st (AEDT – UTC+11:00). The winners will be notified by return email.

So, there you are. Get your entries out and about there…

Nano Reflections

06 Thursday Dec 2012

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Last year I posted about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you NaNoWirMo2who prefer their English unabbreviated. I talked about why I was not doing it and why that made me a heretic.

This year, in order to stay ahead of the curve and reveal my contrary nature, I opted to go ahead and do it. Because not doing it once and claiming you are doing so because it is cool not to is fine but there is no sense in repeating the pose for a second year. No sense in doing what people expect, always keep the audience guessing. 🙂

Actually, the main reason I opted to do it was to give myself a kick up the backside. Earlier in the year I had promised a publisher a complete anthology of short stories (well, one novella and some shorts) and had promised him delivery by a certain time. In the meantime, the deadline has whooshed past and I was still sat there with barely anything written and all of that painfully extracted over the course of several months. So, when November loomed I looked at my barely begun novella and decided that this would be my Nano project.

Of course, I still had the same problems as last year, which were my main reasons for not doing Nano. Work life balances getting all out of synch and all that. This time I even had a regular job to occupy me. I knew that 50K was unlikely to be a target I could aim for and still stay sane, married, healthy and employed. Instead, I opted for a lesser target. As things stood on my WIP I had just under 10K written already and I had predicted it to be about 30K when complete (various additional stories were planned to take the whole project to more than 50K, some of which had already been written and just needed tweaking). I therefore set myself two targets:

1) Write at least 20K words in order to get the total up to more than 30K

2) Complete the novella

By the end of NaNo I had written 20777 words which definitely achieved the first target and had put the novella to just under 30K words (close enough to be not worthwhile worrying about). However, I had not finished the novella…. the reason being that I realised that it is going to be a much longer story than I originally thought. I am almost at the end but there are at least another few thousand words to go and I am pondering additional scenes which may take it even higher than that.

So, I am counting my first NaNo experience as a win. I acheived one of my goals and only did not achieve the other because of changes in the goalposts. Not only that, but the process has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project which had been mired in the doldrums for far too long. In the course of writing I created a new character who I enjoy writing (he was intended to be an incidental local colour character, present for maybe a scene or two, but I ended up taking him further than that) and thought of some new plot ideas which I hope work. Of course, I have also produced something that is grammatically messy, likely filled with examples of bad writing and worse plot cliches but at least I have produced something and there is nothing that cannot be fixed in the edit.

Would I do it again in the future? Maybe. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances – am I working full time? Do I have a project that is languishing? I do think it was a good motivation tool and so worth doing on that basis alone. Not sure I would ever get to the point where I would ‘win’ NaNo but I am confident that it will be useful nontheless.

Be gentle… it’s my first time…

03 Monday Dec 2012

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I was recently informed of a positive review of Transitions. Actually, I was informed of Transitions-AuthorCopythis review a few weeks ago, but am only just getting round to posting about it now. With an event to help organise (or at least provide moral support for), real world work to plan and my insane idea to do Nano this year (that’s a whole different post…) I was actually finding it hard to do much serious blogging last month. There was also the fact that the link I was sent to the review does not actually seem to go to a page that includes my review. I was not sure if this meant my review was yet to be published, was lost deep in an archive or was only visible during the third quarter of the full moon when the month has an F in it and is more than 28 days… So, I didn’t want to post anything about it until I got some form of confirmation.

But now November is over, the event was this weekend gone and Nano is also a thing of the past. I do still have real world work to do but my time is a little freer than it was. Ok, I still cannot find the actual review (if anyone can help, I’d appreciate it) but what the hell…

So, the lovely people over at Penumbra Press sometimes review books by other publishers and they decided to pick up mine (the full review is allegedly in their reviews section but I cannot find it). The fragment of the full review that was sent to me is fairly promising, however. It included:

“Throughout this story D. A. Lascelles artfully uses his skills with words to magically paint images in the reader’s head. Not only do places come into clear focus, but the seasons and atmosphere of the locations are also imbued with a descriptive clarity and realistic essence.

Written for paranormal romance fans of all ages, Transitions successfully marries modern day and roman Britain by interspersing the memories and history of roman officer Lucius Gaius with the ordinarily mundane lives of two university students…Transitions is a fair read that will keep you occupied, even if only for a day trip away.”

And the score was apparently ‘3 books’. I am assuming and hoping that this is out of 5 and not, for example, 500 🙂

This is, in fact, the first review I have ever had. For anything. By anyone who was not a friend or family member, anyway. So far both Transitions and Pirates and Swashbucklers have avoided reviews in places like Goodreads and Amazon though Pirates seems to have been marked as ‘to read’ by a lot of people. So, as a first go at the review wheel I am happy with this result. There will likely be bad ones out there too, not that I have found any yet, so it is good to start on a positive note. Plus, my ego is telling me that I should get that first paragraph printed on a T-shirt because I really like it. A lot.

Luckily, I rarely listen to my ego.