Category: Guest Posts

Accepting the Award…

Guest post
by Shaun McLaughlin

In August, my first novel, Counter Currents, won a silver medal in a modest competition, Dan Poytner’s Global Ebook Awards. (Hold the applause, thanks.) My ephemeral joy at the news rapidly dissipated, replaced by a raging internal debate between Mr. Modesty and Squire Bravado. Can I now call myself an award-winning novelist?

Mr. Modesty sternly notes that the book took second place in a field of ten books in the subcategory of historical fiction. Further, it required a $75 entry fee. Squire Bravado says numbers don’t count—peer recognition does. Senior Bravado points out that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction requires a $50 entry fee.

Unable to resolve this philosophical enigma and sore from banging my head on my desk, I decided to interview real award-winning authors for advice. Out flew requests for a virtual interview.

Many authors just ignored my email, which Mr. Modesty was quick to point out is all the answer I really need. Squire Bravado countered that the three who did respond represented a stellar bunch with global reach. I have to agree.

Representing the United States is Indies Unlimited’s upbeat co-administrator and author Kat Brooks. From the United Kingdom, please welcome novelist and blogger Carol Wyer, an Indies Unlimited contributor. Representing the entire southern hemisphere is award-winning author and Awesome Indies administrator, Tahlia Newland from Australia.

I asked three questions. Continue reading “Accepting the Award…”

My Intellectual Prosthetic

Guest post
by Jeff Shear

I discovered the ghost in my computer back in 1987 when I realized my PC worked like an intellectual prosthetic. Of course every computer can be described as an intellectual prosthetic. By itself, the hard-drive functions as a prosthetic memory. The experience I’m thinking about was stranger and more mysterious. And it was all about writing.

About the time the first PC virus spread over the Internet in the early ‘80s, the buzz in the software world was “integration,” employing a common set of commands for word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. I jumped into the market purchasing a program called Framework. An integrated application, Framework was designed for business but was perfect for writing. Better than perfect. Framework took integrated software a step beyond, throttling the stubborn computer and turning it into more than the sum of its parts. That created unexpected synergies, and let the writing genie out of the bottle. Continue reading “My Intellectual Prosthetic”

The Historical with Romantic Elements

Guest post
by Frances Burke

I love ‘Historicals’, but in recent times this category has become divided into sub-genres, with the emphasis almost totally upon the emotional conflict. The old Historical Novel wasn’t intended to be a Romance, as such, but a novel set in a historical time frame with Romance as one, sometimes major element.

Today the term covers everything from erotica to sweet Regency, with some historical data thrown in. (Apologies to those writers who do their research, although still allowing the love story to overwhelm other aspects.)

I am proposing another, more specific category: “The Historical With Romantic Elements”. It would cover many genres – adventure, thriller, fantasy, paranormal, you name it. It would follow no pattern but the one in the writer’s mind, allowing her to bend rules and take flights of fancy, use any time frame and as many major characters as were consistent with the length of the novel and common sense. And the romantic element might be relatively small, or even relegated to a sub-plot.

A Historical With Romantic Elements (herein to be known as HWRE) would be distinct from Historical Romance and Historical Saga in that it tended to concentrate heavily on research, with the setting detailed and imprinted with colour and texture. Background would be all-important, with bonus points for an unusual setting. Georgian and Tudor times, for instance, are so well documented and used that research almost falls into the lap. With many other periods, it takes hard work to understand the intricacies of politics, wars and social upheavals and to weave these into a story without overloading the reader with detail. Continue reading “The Historical with Romantic Elements”

Dystopian, Utopian, and Cacotopyan

Guest post
by Massimo Marino

The word dystopian comes from the ancient greek with δυσ-, “bad, hard”,and τόπος, “place.” Alternatively it can also be called cacotopia, or anti-utopia.

Many dystopias describe an utopian society where good-life seems to have been achieved, but suffers by at least one fatal issue. Whereas utopian societies are founded on aspiring to the general well-being, a dystopian society’s dreams of improvement are overshadowed by a repression of any sort and origin, at times even a benevolent repression.

The society appears in stories staged on a speculative and visionary future and are characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian rules, ecological and environmental disasters or other events associated with a cataclysmic decline in the society fabric. Continue reading “Dystopian, Utopian, and Cacotopyan”