Tag Archives: writing craft

New Books on the way

Exciting news as I have signed a new contract with Bookouture for a further two books. Both of these will be standalones and I’m really looking forward to sharing them with you.

The first book is out in March next year, with the second to follow in September.

They are both a little different and both stories that I have wanted to write for ages. Real books of the heart. Also the first, which I refer to as Foxfield, is a cautionary tale on never giving up on a book you love. I wrote a version of it a few years ago but the market was not there for it at the time. It was a young adult book, on the younger end of the age range. When I spoke to my lovely editor Ellen about it she saw the possibilities and the rewrite is underway as we speak, no longer young adult and with a darker, more adult tone.

It always pays to remember in publishing it only takes one yes, and some books take just that little bit longer, and perhaps a few adjustments, to find its place.

I’m so happy to be able to say that Foxfield is going to finally make its way out into the world in a new and even more exciting form.

Bookouture re-sign Thorne and Josselsohn

Behind the Bestseller Podcast

I had such an amazing time talking to Sam Blake on her podcast, Behind the Bestseller. 

Romance is the biggest selling genre worldwide and award winning author Ruth Long, in all her various incarnations as RF Long, Ruth Francis Long and Jessica Thorne, writes romance combined with fantasy – from parallel worlds to sci-fi space opera, for both young adults and adults. Discussing what romance is and why it’s so popular, Sam Blake explores how Ruth develops character, the secrets of world building and what makes a successful book in this huge genre. Ruth outlines how important community is and how organisations like the Romantic Novelists’ Association can be of huge help in assisting authors build their career.

Come and listen to us chat about fantasy and romance, about worldbuilding and all the things my characters get up to when I’m not looking. It makes sense*. I promise.

 

*it may not actually make sense.

Writing Fantastical Worlds

On Writing.ie today, there’s an article from myself and E. R. Murray where we talk about writing Urban Fantasy set in Dublin and discuss writing techniques and ideas – Writing Fantastical Worlds

Just to remind everyone that Octocon is on this weekend. If you’re coming along be sure to say hello. If you aren’t, why not? The fabulous guests of honour are Emma Newman and Maura McHugh.

It also means I might be a bit scarce. Then again, hotel wifi permitting, I might not.

Before that I have to get my act together as I’m visiting a school on Friday morning, a Library next week and then I have the Hodges Figgis YA panel. It’s all go here!

Wibbley Wobbly Timey Wimey

So as I’ve said in the past couple of weeks I’m stuck into some serious writing. Or at least I would be if it was going the way it’s supposed to.

Ah but things rarely go the way in which they are “supposed to”. Especially when it comes to writing.

I don’t work easily to a plan. My brain doesn’t work that way. Sometimes I get a full story and can write from beginning to end. Sometimes it’s more out of a magical mystery tour.

Stories don’t always do what we want or what we expect. That goes for writers as well as readers. I have always been what’s known as a “pantser”, a writer who writes “by the seat of their pants”. And sometimes the story only comes to me out of sync. I get the interesting scenes, the shiny bits, the things that want and need to be said. Later on, I have to play a game of join the dots.

And this particular WIP is giving me this mystery tour in spades.

It’s not a problem. But it’s a bit of a pain. And I keep looking at the last WIP I completed a draft of, back in early Spring, which jumped pretty much fully formed from my head to the page (ick), and thinking some quite regretful thoughts. I’m sure I had some pointed comments about it at the time though. I can’t remember them now. Now it’s that perfect paragon who did exactly what I wanted.

This one on the other hand…

Every story is different. Every plot and every character. And every writing process. It’s an adventure every time. That’s what makes writing so much fun.

I’ll just keep telling myself that.

(this also serves to further give evidence that I aten’t ded yet).

Writing Process: Beginning

Once upon a time a twitter friend asked me to blog  about my process. And I went… err… okay…

Because, seriously, I don’t really think much about process. I have these crazy ideas and I write them down. Sometimes they aren’t ready to be turned into full stories, sometimes they are part of other stories and sometimes they just torment me until I do something with them.

It goes something like this. I have an idea (a plot bunny) of something cool, interesting, exciting or a particular character, or even a voice in my head. (Yes, I know how that sounds). The first thing is, while cool, the idea has to be persistent. Really persistent. I have a brain like a sieve at the best of time, and tend to keep notebooks around to jot things down, but still, if I’m too sleepy, in the shower, or driving the car on a motorway (true story), unless the idea is a really powerful one, I will forget it. Sometimes in the moments it takes me to find pen and paper.

I do tend to work on the ideas stage on paper with a pen. And yes, I am very fussy about which paper and which pen. It’s the way I learned to tease out ideas, to work out puzzles and if I’m stuck, no matter how far through a book I might be, I turn back to pen and paper, for that tactile, slow experience of creating words. Ideas fill the notebook. I start following up on some of these ideas, which leads me into research.

Oh how I love my research. Because once you get into the research phase, other ideas start to crop up, like links in a chain. Connections in other stories, history, mythology. So many things that start to interconnect (especially when writing The Treachery of Beautiful Things), and from those connections the story starts to grow.

The other thing that is vital is character, and the voice of the character (s). This is something that for me just has to come. I can’t force their voices and until I have it in my head, the story isn’t going to work. Different point of view characters will have different voices so I can end up with a hero and no idea about his heroine. Or a heroine with a silent hero. Sometimes its the first thing to arrive. The other night I found a teenage girl in my head, giving out about her mother giving her a stupid name. I wrote a page of A4 before it paused. I’ve no idea what she’s doing, why, or where she is, but she is jotted down now, so hopefully her story will turn up soon. Then other characters will turn up. Quite often they want different things from the first voice, which is great, because that’s a conflict. And Conflict drives stories.

Jack’s voice in The Treachery of Beautiful Things was a difficult one to capture until I was well into the book. Jenny on the other hand… like my teenage future-heroine of the other night, Jenny was a voice, a character and a scene all in one flash. But I know what Jack wanted the moment he met Jenny–he wanted to get her to leave the Realm. There were other temptations, but honestly, all he could think of was getting her home to safety. The complete opposite of what Jenny wanted.

Perhaps the main thing I find about beginning stories is to just go with it, to tease out the ideas, to follow the voice, to make the connections where they appear and leave the others for a later date. It’s a very fluid time in my writing process, the time when anything is possible and the story is all potential, waiting to be unveiled.

I don’t write into the mist, as it were. I tend to know where I want to go eventually but not how I will get there. Once I know the voice, the character and maybe a few scenes I try to think about where the resolution lies. It is a journey, not just going walkabout, so it needs an ultimate destination. What would be the strangest place for this/these characters to end up? What would challenge and change them the most? What would be the most amazing showdown I can think of?

So there we go – the beginning of my writing process. Possibly slightly insane.

What about you guys? Do you have a preferred way of writing if you write? Do you notice things as you read? Do you follow research like a puzzle box? What are your favorite voices?

Ticking over & the Tyranny of Story

Well, recovery is one thing, but the website is all recovered from the nasty hacking (that was my most unfun thing possibly forever and totally ruined my watching of Endeavour, not to mention a couple weeks afterwards) and I’ve been something of a naughty author not updating my blog very much. Alternately, I’ve been a very good writer because I have been writing. Continue reading Ticking over & the Tyranny of Story

Fairytales in fiction

Claire Hennesy has a thought provoking post up today about Retellings, where writers take well known and established stories like fairytales and folklore and use them as a base for their own stories, building on them, changing their slant or reworking them into something new. I started to reply there, but given the fact that I LOVE this subject, my reply started to get long, which is a little unfair on someone else’s blog. So I thought I’d put it here instead. You should of course read Claire’s post first! (but be warned, I now have MORE books to add to my neverending TBR pile).

For me, it seems to work the other way. Quite often I start out telling my own story and find that the fairy tale or mythic elements bleed through as the characters take on those ghostly archetypes that linger in the background of our cultural life. They are still my stories, my characters, still in their own stories but rather than deliberately drawing on archetypes I find they filter into the story in a subtle way (a hopefully subtle way). Because those fairytales are powerful things. They’re beguiling and whimsical. On the surface. But then you go deeper. And deeper. They tell raw and compelling stories when you whittle them down to their purest form. They have darker versions of themselves hidden away in the shadows behind our polished up 21st century versions.

So if I show you an image of a single glass slipper on a staircase, your mind fills in the rest and you go Ah-HA! If there’s blood on the slipper, or if the slipper shatters into a million pieces, your mind is both startled and intrigued. How has the story been changed? Or has it? Is there some older, darker version you haven’t heard before.

I think it’s part of the way writers often feel that stories tell themselves. That they run away with us clinging on for dear life via the pen.

So in my case a fantasy quest novel takes on elements of folklore and fairytales harking back to those older legends and the place of blood and sacrifice they came from. Or an urban fantasy set in modern day Dublin becomes a reimagining of the Percival legend with Celtic overtones and a heroine skirting to the wrong side of divine law.

Myths and folktales lend resonance to our stories and give a sense of a far deeper pool of storytelling behind them. It’s an exciting and abundant area in which to play.

Researchy* researchy goodness

Wow, this month ran away with me. Why? Well a number of reasons. Life, of course, and a bit of a whirl on ideas, research, rewrites etc.

The research bit is what I’m thinking most of today. As a writer I’m continually researching. I want to know how everything happened (luckily I married an  engineer who wants to know how everything works). I want to know about the people involved and the events which shaped history. I got a fantastic interactive DVD on Dublin from Viking to Tudor times yesterday from the fab Dublin City Radio. Once I can wrestle it back from my children I’ll spend hours playing with it.

Once I can wrestle it back from my children.

Research means always asking questions, about squirrelling away bits of information to be used later, about following up on things. Anything can be useful information. Especially when writing fantasy. Books of course, but also documentaries, exhibitions, lectures, holidays and day trips.

And they don’t have to be boring. Continue reading Researchy* researchy goodness