ERXTVZXRXDB9

Blood Tithe by Glenn J. Soucy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Before I say anything else this book only scored 4/5 because I really disliked the ending.

As far as I am concerned any book, whether it is in a series or not should be able to stand alone and have a defined point where the book ends. I accept there maybe some questions left unanswered but if you never returned to the series this would be minor not major.

In this case I think that the book ended about 2 chapters too early.

That aside.

What you have is the tale of boy who's life is changed, not necessarily, for the better when he almost dies in an accident. The story is fast paced, well structured and Soucy manages to keep things interesting throughout the whole book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tale even though it is quite bleak and will probably buy the second in the series at some point.

Well worth a read if you a looking for a very different take on the 'Super Powered Teen' type genre.









View all my reviews

1. is a quote of the day that I believe is cool and think others will too and this is often retweeted so I guess I must be on the same wave length as some of my followers.
2. reminds my followers about my blog, if you’re reading this it may be due to that tweet.
3. directs people to www.georgeandthedragon.co.uk which is part of my overall campaign to highlight the arrival of my début creation.

...for procrastinators everywhere!

This thread really does carry on from yesterday's thread and all started with a post earlier on twitter.

This allowed me to create my very own Hollywood sign


This got me to wondering, 'what else can I create on the trippleW?'

How about my own Cinema Sign?



Fastfood joint?



All these and more can be created at http://says-it.com/marquee/

How about your very own movie poster?  Marvel Superhero?

How about something a little more quriky?  New York Zoos has this great on-line toy for children called; Build Your Wild Self


This is how I created a younger more 'Wild' George.

If that's not quirky enough you can even create your own Picaso Head.

Of course if you're a regular of my blog you may recall my love of Wordle and it's word clouds:


How about creating your own font?  Or maybe you'd prefer to create your own snowflake?

Alternatively if you are really lacking creative input why not let someone else do it for you via Create your own myths and legends.

The internet truly does have it all.

...you're not looking in the right place.  Or to put it in other words you're not asking the right question.

It never ceases to amaze me the sheer abundance of information available on the internet.  So much so I wonder what writers did, in years gone by, if they needed to know something.

Today I wanted to add a copyright and disclaimer to the beginning of my E-book.  Simple task bring up Google and type "Ebook Disclaimer" and I find no-end of related sites.

In the end I chose this one:

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/01/6-copyright-page-disclaimers-and-giving-credit/

I also then went and selected the simpler of his copyright text as well.

The first result that came up for me in Google was this:

http://www.seqlegal.com/free-legal-documents/ebook-disclaimer

They offer a proper legal disclaimer for factual/advice style books and it's free.  I've never known a lawyer to give something away for free before.

I was also looking a book covers, again, today and came across a really simple one that I thought would be cool to use as a basis for my own book.

This is the jacket in question:


I like it because it's largely designed not drawn and, therefore, would require a few silhouette images but no expensive hand drawn pictures or Shutter-stock images etc to create just someone with a fair bit of talent.

This got me to thinking about copyright theft of works like book jackets and another search on-line and I ended up reading through the following:

http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2013/04/19/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/

Now I don't think it answered my specific question but it did give me food for thought and I've learnt something from reading the blog post.

Rare is the occasion when I struggle to find information I seek on-line and usually this just requires a modification of my search terms.

A huge amount of information is stored on Wikipedia alone and I guess this constantly evolving on-line encyclopaedia is the modern equivalent of 10 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  And yes I did just look that up as well.

As storytellers all of this information is at our fingertips.  It is freely available for us to mould into our works to use to improve our writing.  If knowledge truly does equal power then maybe the internet empowers us all.

Been a long time, been a long lonely lonely........

I have a habit of using music lyrics in my post titles.  I wonder if that has anything to do with me being a wedding DJ or just because I like music.

So yes it has been a few days since I last blogged because I've been busy doing some digital redecorating.

Firstly I've set-up a website for me personally at: www.philiptolhurst.co.uk and it looks something a little like this:

Then of course those of you familiar with my blog will already have noticed the overhaul of the way the blog looks as well and the similarity between the two:

I need to work out how to change the background colour, but I think I'll end up creating the banner with the graduated background and uploading it from there.

Finally there's my twitter account and at the moment this looks a little like this:


The beauty of my Twitter page is that it still has that great close up of the dragon that used to form the banner to this blog.

I really like that so it may well make a comeback.

To accomplish this I've used a few tools.  The most import of which was Artisteer.  This is a great piece of software although not cheep at $50.  However, it did enable me to create the website from scratch and upload the theme to Wordpress and then turn that into a Blogger theme and upload that directly.

I also used Pixlr's Editor and other sources that I've previously mentioned.

It's taken a fair bit of trial and error and no doubt  I'll continue to play but it can be done.

Now back to final editing and looking forward to a March release of the book.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Do you believe in faeries? An interesting question, how many of us have left money under our pillows as children for the tooth faerie? How many people were duped by the Cottingley fairy hoax?

Aprillynne Pike sets out in her début novel, Wings, to try and breath new life into the Fae myth. One of the difficulties I think the young adult fantasy author faces is to successfully merge the real and usually mundane with the fantastical and usually more interesting part of their story. This is something Aprillynne Pike manages quite well.

The book focuses on our main character, Laurel, who, having been home-schooled until she was 15, has just become the new girl at college. It deals with how she copes with this new environment and then having managed to settle in at school how her life is turned upside down in more ways than one. The well crafted story is easy to follow and well written, the main characters are well formed and believable which is a feet considering the nature (punn intended - read the book) of some of the characters.

Although a little too short for my liking, the book grabbed me drew me in and made me want to finish it. Part of it's charm is the journey of discovery you are taken as Laurel discovers more about herself and her history. Thrown into the mixing pot are family worries, boy troubles, and general teenage angst.

The story ending is well crafted and cleverly leaves the story open for a sequal. In fact there are hints thorughout the book of more to come. Several characters are barely touched upon, the fantastical world is only glimpsed, the story truely has only just begun.

I won't spoil the book for you but there is one small part of the book, an explanation about a certain facet of the story, that I think doesn't really work. I understand why it is the way the author made it that way but the explanation doesn't work for me when everything else does.

To sum up this was a thoroughly enjoyable if a little too short for my liking and I'm looking forward to reading the sequals.

Phil

View all my reviews

In all seriousness I have never considered myself to be a writer.

If I give it consideration then I prefer to think of myself as a storyteller.

If only it was as easy as John Hurt had it back in the late 80's.

In my head live a jumble of stories all vying for the chance to be told.  But the only way that is going to happen is if I knuckle down, start bashing the keys and create novels/books out of them.

The problem with that though is it's not a simple as just typing the story.  Once you've done that there are endless hours of rewriting, editing, proofing and even reading aloud.  Even once you've got a finished manuscript then what do you do with it?  If you have an agent they'll tout it to publishers for you.  Or you may be an indie and publish it yourself.

Even then once the book is available to the General Public you still have to advertise and market the book. And you have to do this while starting the process all over again on your next creative effort.

When you look at the earnings of the average writer you do wonder if the effort is worth it, financially at least.  But still this is my first foray into this world and I have some ideas for marketing my début novel and we'll see if they work.

If they don't work then I have some more.  Which is one of the keys to the whole marketing process.  You need to have multiple marketing strategies and I've already started mine before I've actually finished my final round of editing.

Web presence is obviously a big factor in this and I've managed, in a short space of time, to get to 1000+ twitter followers.  A personal milestone and hopefully I'll go on to get more.

At the beginning of my twitter foray I targeted like minded people, authors and writers, but I've developed a series of more targeted strategies to find followers who I think will like my book.  As part of this I use the
standard Twitter search but I've also recently started Pluggio with varying success.

Then there's this blog as well.  I'd like to get more 'buy in' on the blog but it ticks over nicely.  My facebook page I hope will start to build likes and then there are going to be multiple websites.  Each book will have a website like George and the Dragon but so will I have a website in my role as an author.

But then there's so much more I will be able to use once I get my first book on line. Goodreads' author program comes to mind for starters.  Page boosting on Facebook and Adwords are other possibilities.  I've already had a play with Page boosting.

So, fingers crossed, there's plenty of avenues I can use and people will enjoy the book when it's released.

Okay I know that's probably the worst title I've come up with but the only other title I could think of was New Female - the literal translation of Novella - and that was just rubbish.

Well it's not so much of a crisis more a minor panic.

There are parts of this I really like and parts I dislike.  I'm not totally happy with the font although it really highlights what I was after as a concept.  I do really like the way the capitals stand out so you can really read the URL it doesn't all merge into some unreadable block of text.

Next I decided to combine the two.  I've actually used this on my Facebook page to see what it would look like.  It's not bad, that's for sure, but it's not perfect either.

I received some good news this morning.

As short story I wrote about wolves has been accepted for inclusion into a wolf themed, charity anthology.

My story is called The Last Pack and I tried to concentrate on the harsh realities that wolves in the wild face while also showing their triumphs over adversity.



For me this is great because it gives me exposure to a different audience.  This of course is what any business would like and as a writer who is about to publish his first book it pays to think of this endeavour as a business proposition.



Once the book is finalised and I decide to publish everything I do has to be looked at from a business perspective.

How much I pay for the cover for example has to be reflected in the number of book sales required to cover that cost.  This then impacts on what cover price I charge.

Advertising and Marketing are two of the big question marks.  With no way to forecast sales there's no way to budget for either.  So anything I do to advertise or market my book as to be free or very low cost.

I've already started out on this road.  If you haven't already checked it out have a look at georgeandthedragon.co.uk.   This is a teaser website I put together. It's designed to get people interested in the book before its release.

This blog is also another way of introducing people to the book and to pique their curiosity.

I have slowly but steadily increasing Twitter following, see yesterday's post, and you can follow me @philiptolhurst.

I also have a Facebook page:  facebook.com/philtolhurst come on over and like me :)

Recently I experimented by spending £5.00 on boosting a post I made to my page.  The boosted post reached 9000+ people who I believe had expressed an interest in Dragons, Novels and Fantasy.

Although I don't think it has significantly increased my page likes it does give the idea that I can spend a small amount of money with Facebook and reach a relatively large amount of people.  The next time I do it I'll use a post that I have spent more time thinking over.

I also have an idea to start a viral campaign on Facebook when I release the book but I am going to keep that close to my chest.

Back to George and the Dragon.  10 Chapters still to edit and some work to do as previously discussed.

I thought I'd talk today about Twitter.

I'm a fairly new Twitter user, you can find me there as @philiptolhurst so I don't have a huge following, maybe 900 people, but I am investing in time to increase it.

Even in the short time I have been a member I have learnt a few things that I thought I'd share with you.

The first thing I found out is that people who you follow often send you an auto-mated message in response. This is called a direct message or a DM.

My original DM read as follows:

"Wow thanks for following. Check out my blog and look for my book, George and the Dragon, in early March."

Not to bad I wasn't forcing any links on anyone but still fairly generic as DMs go.   A short while after introducing this I read some advice regarding DMs.   I cannot, unfortunately remember where I read the advice or I'd link to it.  What they basically said was if you must use a DM use it to open up a conversation with people.  They even suggested using "Knock! Knock!"

So instead of the above I changed it to:

 'Who's your favourite dragon?" 



Almost straight away I noticed the difference.  Not everyone responds and some people don't even have a favourite dragon.  Which is sad, at least in my opinion everyone should have a favourite dragon.  However, you do get responses and you do get to open up conversations with people.

I did get one smart answer:  Duncan Bannatyne.

So not long after this I changed the question to:

In all of Film, TV and Books who's your favourite dragon? (No not from the den!)

This isn't really about the question though it's all about connecting with people, making an impression.  Making them want to follow you and realise you're not just trying to sell them something but are actually a real person.

The answers, if you are interested, I have received were not surprising except that Puff was the most popular.

I never even considered Puff when thinking about what people would answer;  Smaug (from the Hobit), Seraphina (from the book of the same name),    Saphira (from Eragon),  Falcor (from the Never ending story) or even my favourite Draco (from Dragonheart).  But no not Puff.

So I'll leave you with this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_rItLPTXc&feature=kp

As I have already mentioned I'm re-writing the book so that I kill off one of the lesser characters.  I'm doing this to give his character closure but also because I want his death to have a little ripple that has an effect on George, the main character throughout the rest of the book.

1. A rewrite of the first two chapters
2. Integrate the death and two funerals.
3. Finish the final edit.
4. Read through the entire book out loud.
5. Prepare for publishing.  

Should keep me busy for a couple of weeks and then it'll be all about publicising the launch date as much as possible.

You can find out more about it here: http://nanowrimo.org/

One of the things you learn, or are taught, as a novel writer is to take a step back and look at all the characters in your book.

You have to ask yourself could one character be doing this job where I have several.

With George and the Dragon I was no different.  Originally I had a French speaking female spy working with the allies and  a coven of magic users from different corners of the globe and the hint of a female Nazi agent who would become a rival for our female spy.

The female spy was replaced with Squadron Leader Andy McKnight. (Check out the word cloud and you'll get an idea that he is a major player in the book).  He is the Bruce Willis/Hugh Jackman/Liam Neeson type of the book. Slightly older, grizzled but still more than able to take care of himself.  He already had a major part in the book anyway and easily slipped into his new role as well.

The coven was written out as well as they just added unnecessary confusion in a book that already has a fairly large number of significant characters.

The reason I'm discussing this is that I came to a conclusion this morning.  There's another character in the book I need to deal with.  He has a reasonably significant role to play in the book but then his involvement ends and I originally dealt with that by sending him off never to be heard of again.   That seemed a bit 'convenient' and so I've decided to make him a hero and kill him off.  There are reasons for this that will become clearer when you read the book.  As will my decision to add the above photo to this post:

Today I have been mostly designing a mood board.

...let me loose control"  as Chaka Demus & Pliers once sang way back in the early 1990's.

No this isn't a blog about music it's about being teased.  No not mercilessly teased,  more tempted variety.

You see I've hinted in earlier posts that I was working on a website for George and the Dragon.  Well this week I finally finished it.

The concept is fairly simply.  Those who've read my early posts will be familiar with the synopsis for the book:

George is a 13 year-old boy who befriends a dragon at the start of the Battle of Britain.  The RAF, under attack from Nazi dragons, are left with little choice but to send George and his dragon, Spitfire, into battle to fight on the side of the allies.  

The Knights of the Sky saga will tell the story of George and Spitfire's adventures during World War II.

So with that in mind I need to come up with a hook for the website that would get people interested in the concept of the book.

I'm not sure how I thought of it but the idea of a replica wartime newspaper lodged itself between my ears and stuck fast.

So this is a modified version of what the website looks like:

Are dragons anthropomorphic?

This is a question I started asking myself today.  Why?  I have no idea. But since it seems like a good question I thought I'd share my thoughts here.

So what does Wikipedia say about it:

Anthropomorphism, or personification, is attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being. Examples include depicting deities with human form and ascribing human emotions or motives to forces of nature, such as hurricanes or earthquakes.

Of note on the Wikipedia article is John Tenniel's depiction of the Rabbit in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  I've just started reading this to my daughter and it's the first illustration in the book.

 Even the Owls of Ga'Hoole wear armour, write, live in houses etc


Bacl the question of Aslan and if there's a question of Aslan what of Draco?

Draco is probably my favourite movie dragon from my favourite dragon movie; Dragonheart.


So how much different. I ask you, is Draco to say Toothless? Toothless, from How to Train your Dragon, can't talk but he does manage to communicate with Hiccup and it would seem he can understand the boy as well.  But where Toothless comes across like a dog, albeit with wings and scales, Draco is represented as a much more human like being.  One that would sacrifice a part of himself to save another no less.  Is that act of self sacrifice a human act?

Or does a dragon have to be more human-esque to be considered anthropomorphic?  Do they have to be bipedal? Wear armour? Carry a weapon?

I don't have the answer. It's just a question I've been pondering today as I work on other things.

Maybe you have an opinion you'd like to share.

Casting Shadows Everywhere by L.T. Vargus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I usually read fantasy and rarely read this sort of novel. But the last three books I have read, excluding a couple of cool Novellas, have been a bit of a let down. So I thought I'd try something a bit different.

This is the journal of a fifteen year old boy, Jake, and how a series of events turn his life upside down and inside out.

Extremely well written, LT Vargus, has done amazing work on creating a book that reads exactly like you would expect the journal of a 15 year old boy to read. Complete with expletives, random thoughts and other believable entries.

I found myself sucked into Jakes world and believing everything that happens to him. You get a wonderful insight into his mind as he learns from both his dysfunctional, criminal, cousin Nick and a college Psychology class he isn't even supposed to be undertaking.

The book starts out like a simple journal and much like a parabolic curve everything ramps up towards a climatic finish.

Overall a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Phil



View all my reviews

So as I close in on the time when I'm going to publish George and the Dragon my thoughts turn to book covers and what I think would make a decent book cover.

The first thing I did was to have a good search around on-line to see what there was out there.

There's a whole industry that appears to thrive on selling pre-made book covers.  To me this seems like writing a novel to fit the cover rather than the reverse.  While I have a found a stock picture I would like to be used as the cover for Second Chance At Happiness I would still rather pay to have someone turn that into a bespoke cover than go to a website and trawl through their pre-made covers trying to find one that 'loosely' fits the book.



I mean seriously do you think the book covers for any of the most popular books you can think of were just picked from a random list of covers on some website because they were cheep.

Take Harry Potter for example not only are the covers all bespoke through each series of covers there are common features.  Especially the primary colour set at the top.


I have decided, I think as it's not set in stone, to use a company that offers to both help with the cover design and getting the book on Kindle and Smashwords.  For me this makes the most sense as it will neatly tie up the end process of getting the book out to the masses.

Elf Killers by Carol Marrs Phipps
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

How big is a troll?

I ask because it's a relevant question. Time and time again I found myself wondering this while reading this book. It's a train of thought that was triggered during an early part of the elves flight from the trolls. It was one of the first inconsistencies that jared me the last one being the end which made no sense if I'm being honest.

While creating languages for the two races in the book was admirable they heavily over use it with the trolls. Two thirds of the way through the book I started to skip large parts of the troll dialog, much of which was repetition anyway, to save myself a headache.

The story is not bad but several things never made sense to me. For example why didn't the elves stay in the eastern woods instead of risking their lives in the Strah with troll killing birds?

Overall not a good read.

View all my reviews

What have I been up to lately?

Well it hasn't all been editing - although I should have done more than I have.   However, I have been pondering over a problem I have.

I own GeorgeAndTheDragon.co.uk which as part of the the book launch I will use to push the book.

However, if you clicked on that link you'll realise I haven't yet done anything with the website.  I don't have a book jacket/cover to show off and I don't even know what style of font the name of the book will end up using.  So I've been pondering what to do with the website in the meantime.

A couple of days ago I hit on the idea to turn it into a war-time newspaper. Into which I'm going to insert clues about the book and hidden links to an 'About Me' page and other bits as and when I add them.

Here's an original news paper from the period, although a little later in the war:




To give you a taster this is the heading I have designed for the website:


The adverts are based on real adverts from the period but the HP Sauce one had a wobbly border that I found difficult to reproduce.  The title is made up but loosely based on the Evening Standard.  The rest of the design is fairly typical of the period.   I may tweak it some more before I commit to it.

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have the site up and running.

This highlights:

1. Overuse of common words such as: Could, Feel/Feeling/Felt, Initial-ing, Just/Then and Knew/Know to name but a few of the words it will highlight.
2. Grammar
3. Diction
4. Sentence Length
5. Writing Style

And much more besides.  It has helped me to improve the way George and the Dragon is written and hopefully that will make it a better reading experience.

I will never publish a book without first editing it with Pro Writing Aid.

*They've now placed a 3,000 word limit on their free accounts but that's still pretty decent as limits go.