This weekend just gone I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a group where someone had posted something like this:

The reaction it sparked I thought was both eye opening and hugely divisive. On one hand you had people arguing that these alternatives were perfectly acceptable. On the other were the group that would state any editor worth their salt would suggest replacing them with said, or asked in the case of a question.

There was even one comment where the poster said they would not read a book where the author used anything other than said or asked.

This evening I've just finished reading The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - the first book I've finished in ages.  These are a pair of best selling authors working on a collaborative project. I'd like to think they and their editor/s know what they are about.

I have to admit they don't use said, asked or any of the alternatives that often. They are happy to leave speech to stand on it's own as part of the dialogue.

However there are plenty of times when they do.

There are examples of asked and said like:

Roberta asked, "Birds, or Dinosaurs?"

"There are other sorts here too," Yue-Sai said softly.

They also often write sentences like:

Joshua grunted. "Makes you proud."

But they also write sentences such as this:

"Are you sure?" Captain Chen murmured.

or elsewhere:

"Here, Captain," the engineer replied promptly.

So they are happy mixing up the way they handle their dialogues depending on the narrative. I'd like to think I treat my works similarly. Although I have to say I'm more aware of not over using alternatives to said and asked just for the sake of it especially as a lot of my dialog is telepathic and not spoken.

I would be more than interested to here people's thoughts on this.

Phil

George Atkins is the eponymous hero of my novel George and the Dragon. Throughout the early stages of the narrative we get little clues as to what he looks like

Obviously I, as the author and creator of George, have my own idea of what he should look like. 

And I am sure people who have read the book each have their own idea of what he might look like. Many times I have found my idea of a given character challenged when I watch a film of a book or see a drawing of a character in that book.

Here I present to you the first ever drawing, that I am aware of, of George himself.

I actually think the artist has done a great job from my brief, although I think his head could be a stronger shade of ginger. That apart I'm so chuffed expect to see images of many of the other characters from George and the Dragon appear on my blog in the future.

What do you think? Have you attempted to draw him yourself? Fancy a go yourself let me know I may even let you have a copy of the novel for free! 

Phil

I recently posted this picture of a series of dragons onto the Facebook group Dragons are not just for Christmas.

If you're curious the link comes from here: 

https://dragoncalling.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/dragon-size-chart/

This got me thinking. I've always maintained that Spitfire is a little bit bigger than Draco (No 9. above). With the regal dragons being a bit smaller.  I've also often though that Spitfire should have a wingspan of about twice that of a Spitfire.

The author of the blog post linked above puts Draco at about 5m tall when stood on all fours. But that didn't help me to size him that easily.  I needed more data and that came from here: 

http://dh-the-sorerers-curse.tumblr.com/post/110058506391/been-bugging-me-a-little-regarding-the-three

I'm respecting the wish for the images not to be copied so pop on over have a look and come back.

What it tells me is that Draco has a wingspan of 73 ft and that converts to 22.25 m.

Here are the three main fighters from the Battle of Britain (as close to scale as I can get them) for comparison:

 Hurricane - wingspan 12m

Messerschmidt BF-109 - wingspan 9.9m

I was quite astonished by this revelation. Draco from Dragonheart has almost exactly twice the wingspan of a Spitfire fighter plane.

Spitfire the dragon is a little bigger than that and, drawn to scale, would look something like this:

At least this is how I imagine him to be in my head.  It also gives me a good start when I try to figure out how big some of the characters in the second book in the Knights of the Sky series are.

Hope you found that enlightening.

Phil

Stephen King makes a valid point in this quote.  I prefer to try and think of it as write a 1000 words a day and in 3 months you'll have written a novel.

At moment the still unnamed sequel to George and the Dragon has a word count of 71,879. George and the Dragon is around 105,000 words. I found these great info-graphics and just had to share them with you.

If I'm honest I'll admit that George and the Dragon pretty much named itself.

It's obviously a play on the legend of St George and the Dragon and as the main character is called George precisely because of this legend the title was easy to come up with.

There were other considerations as well. I wanted the book to 'catch' passing traffic so the title ticked this particular box as well.

The title is also simple and should give the reader an idea that the book quite heavily features dragons. When you factor in the cover design it becomes clear that the book is also set during World War II.


There are other things that have come out of this that I have also found equally useful. I get to ride on the back of the hash tag fervor for St George's day for example.

So all in all I'm very happy with the title of my debut novel but it's lead to a bigger problem!

What do I call the sequel?

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The working title for the sequel has always been:

George and the Griffins of Malta.  

The main reason for this is there were going to be three Griffins born on Malta and called Faith, Hope and Charity.


They were to be named after a mythical trio of Gloucester Gladiators who were responsible for the defense of the island during the Siege of Malta.

However, I just found that the story with the three Griffins in it didn't work and took the focus away from other developments in the story line.  So if I kept this title it would now be George and the Griffin of Malta.

However, the story of the Griffin is not George's so the title is a little misleading.

This novel is really the story of several different main characters on both sides of the war so any title named George and is only really selling part of the narrative to the reader.

I'm also not sure I want to go do the "Harry Potter and the...." type title. After all it's already been done.

Next up was an attempt to keep the same style/pattern so I came up with:

Excalibur and the Ark.

For me this is ticks a couple of important boxes.  It would attract searches for both 'The Ark' and 'Excalibur' and both feature in the novel. Although the Ark isn't the Ark you think it is!

It also set a precedence that all books in the series are going to be named in the same way; A and the B

I'm not sure but I think that's going to be a little restrictive in the future as I'm already tripping over it now.

So next up I changed it up slightly and made an attempt to factor in keys from the main stories of the book. So I came up with something like

The Griffin, the Ark and the Queen.

or alternatively.

The Griffin, the Island and the Throne.

More recently one of the three main narratives has changed a lot, partly due to the three Griffins but there are other reasons as well. What it means is that there is a different element of evil that features as part of each of these stories.

Given this I went all the way back to:

George and the Unveiling of Evil.

Not quite liking the use of 'George and...' I've also considered:

Evil Unleashed 

and

Evil Unveiled

Evil Unleashed rang a bell but it turns out it's a rather poorly rated move. A search for the term Evil Unveiled reveals it is used as part of an anti-pedophile online campaign.

So I'm still no further forward in my quest for a title of the book. Time will, I hope, provide me with the answer.

Phil

Back on subject it gives me great pleasure to announce that the five lucky winners of a signed copy of George and the Dragon have been selected.

Goodreads officially provided me with the details a little earlier today and the lucky five are:

Over 1100 people entered the competition, a figure I am, quite honestly, overwhelmed by.

Once I think of something choice to write in each book I shall be popping a copy into the post for each of the lucky winners!

For those that didn't win don't forget there are many different ways to purchase your own copy of the book.

I've now set it up so that people who buy the physical copy of the book from Amazon get get a totally free copy of George and the Dragon as a Kindle eBook.

You can buy it on the iStore if you have an iPad or iPhone.