Interview with an Alien

 Indie Writing  No Responses »
Apr 282012
 

On June 21st 2029 a large golden sphere appeared in the sky over Vancouver, Canada. The occupants remained silent for several days until, unknown to everyone else on the planet, an intrepid reporter from the CBB managed to make contact. A few days later an alien agreed to meet and be interviewed. The interview content was, for those times, so unexpectedly strange that the interviewer decided he would be better off never showing the transcript to another living soul. Now, one thousand years later, his video notes have finally been found, transcribed, and for the first time the Emissary’s opening words to humankind can be enjoyed by every inhabitant of this wondrous planet.

CBB Interviewer: It’s hard to know where to begin. So let me first ask you why you decided to visit this rich and beautiful planet of ours.

Chepi: The Sphere brought me here. I had no idea your planet even existed until there it was, sprawled out in front of me like some chaotic ant hill.
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Writing fictional characters – working with blood, vampires and relationships.

 Indie Writing, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 212012
 

Before I typed the first word of the novel Sangian, I’d first written two other novels and then spent around two years writing poetry and posting it to two literary forums. I started the first novel with great optimism, thinking that the transition to fiction from the rigours of academic publications would be a breeze. I soon had these crazy delusions squeezed out of me as, after the first two pages, I began to stumble around hopelessly trying to put some life into my characters and paint with words far richer pictures than before. I went back to favourite authors and reread passages that showed me how they had been able to describe crying, a living room, an empty desert and endless other things with such vividness and texture. Slowly I began to piece something together and eventually got to 70,000 words and called it a novel.
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Can a Book be Bad?

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 142012
 

It’s not too uncommon to find comments everywhere suggesting that literacy is on the decline, that acceptable use of grammar is fast disappearing, or that there are too many bad books making way too much money. Rather than hoping that these fears go away, it seems certain that the recent dramatic rise in independent publishing and self-publishing will ensure that such feelings will be with us until some improbable cultural revolution takes place. There’s even a new cliché, the idea that the only response to upstarts who publish but can’t use a semicolon is to declare almost hysterically that the only resort is to throw the book repeatedly against some wall!
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How to Avoid Problems with eBook Formatting

 Indie Writing  No Responses »
Apr 062012
 

Anyone who has ever formatted a text document for an ebook will never again underestimate how difficult the process can be. As everyone treading this difficult path will quickly tell you, the neatly arranged text that looks back at you from a computer screen is an illusion. Under the finely ordered lines, perfectly structured paragraphs and smoothly consistent fonts lies a subterranean world of almost magical deception and falsehoods. Like mythical beings sprinkled into the darkest hollows of the night, a standard text document is infested with hidden codes and expressions that are so lost in the alchemy of strange, forgotten realms that few will ever discern their purpose.
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