Musings of Two Creative Minds

Before I get into promoting my new blog, I thought I should explain myself to you all.  The reason why I've created "The Vampire Blogs" was simple.  It's part experiment, and part story building.  With the popularity of vampires in books, it was only a matter of time before I found myself getting drawn in, although I had sworn to avoid the genre.  Yet, like any writer, I couldn't help speculating on  "Well, if I did a vampire story, I'd make it more original and do this, this and this..."  Naturally, an idea came and began to snowball on me. I wanted to keep most if not all the typical strengths and weaknesses of the traditional vampire, while at the same time making such a being fit into my Para-Earth Series world.  The being I would have a reasonable explanation for the various abilities such as shape-shifting, turning into mist, etc.   I would also give him a few new traits that fit with the being I had made him out of.  I won't go in...

"The Vampyre Blogs" are here. Click below to get your first glimpse into the life of the first vampire from the Para-Earth Series.  Feedback and comments are welcome and encouraged. http:// thevampyreblogs.blogspot.com/ 2014/01/ a-brief-introduction-to-this-bl og.html

Okay I haven't said anything about "The Ship" lately so I thought I'd bring you all up to date on what's happening on that front.  The news is that there's been a lot of writing and rewriting of scenes as I try to get the first draft done.  I find writing the 2nd book more slow at times, but the quality of what I'm creating is better overall.  Because I know some of what to watch out for.  Are the characters behaving like themselves?  Am I making the motivations for their actions clear?  Is this believable? Are things easy to follow and not confusing for the reader?  Am I doing a good job introducing and re-introducing the main characters for both previous readers and those who are new to the series? Usually, a lot of this would be caught in the second and third drafts.  But from my perspective, a lot of this has make sense to ME before I can expect my readers to follow it.  And if what I've done isn't working for me, there's a problem. ...

Okay, in my last entry I disclosed I was working on a vampire novel.  Now this is a genre that has been done and redone so many times it's unbelievable.  And almost every time there are new twists and turns added to it that they barely seem to resemble the traditional vampires that Bela Legosi and Christopher Lee made legendary in Hollywood.  Today we have vampires that just totally ooze sex appeal, can sparkle in daylight instead of turning to dust, can have sex and produce offspring, are either monsters or saints, etc.  And they are still as popular as ever in spite of all the changes to the original legend. Now I'm not just talking about Bram Stoker's "Dracula".  That was not the first vampire story.  There were many others. If you ever get the opportunity check out "The Penguin Book Of Vampire Stories" and you'll see ones that predate Mr. Stoker's work by quite a few years.  But in that collection you'll also meet other kinds of vampire...

Yesterday, against my better judgement, I started writing a second book.  Now I'm still working on "The Ship" which is the sequel to my first novel "The Bridge".  But I was having troubles with "The Ship".  I was making progress, but it was so slow I was going crazy at times.  I would write over a 1000 words in one day and then dump about half of them because they weren't moving the plot along or really helping develop the characters as much.  I kept what did seem to be working and built on that the next day.  Sometimes this is one way of dealing with Writer's Block for me. Then yesterday, something else happened.  An idea for a different book that is part of my Para-Earth series started gelling like no one's business.  It had sat on the back-burner for so long now it was boiling over.  Scenes and characters started coming to life to such an extent I had only one of three options: A) Start writing the book B) Leave it alone and hope I ...

 I have a special treat for you all today.  I have a guest blogger today.  I've been wanting to do this for some time.  I know you're familiar with some of MY views and ideas, but I wanted to give you some points of view on writing from other authors.  So please help me welcome the author of the novel "Gothic" Nicole Field! Hey all! I'm Nicole, I'm from Melbourne, Australia, and at the moment, I'm busily writing a paranormal romance / urban fantasy series starting with the title  Gothic . Allan has kindly invited me here today to talk about my thoughts on plot and character creation. Lucky for me, I have many ideas on both of those things!  Many years ago, a tiny nugget of a plot appeared to me in a dream. I remember seeing a vampire standing at the door to a house that he hadn't been invited into and couldn't get in. In the doorway, there was a strong, young woman standing in defence of the person inside the house who was refusing to see t...