Who's the hero?

The scene is familiar, shelf after shelf of books, brand spanking new books, never opened and straight out of the box. Slowly working your way through the rank and file of literature laid out for your inspection and every one you pick up, you put it back; why?

The Blurb, I can't help it, as soon as I read the words ex-whatever, and it is usually one of the elite special forces familiar to us all I lose interest. Don't get me wrong, I have enormous respect for the standards and achievements of special forces, especially those serving with HM forces at home and overseas. I know they are special, very special.

When the manuscript of Iceline was handed back after the first reader had finished with it he said it read like a combination of Jack Higgins and John Buchan. I took that as a compliment, they are writers I have admired and enjoyed for many years. Buchan's "The Thirty Nine Steps" was on the edge of my mind while I was writing Iceline. I'm not sure how many times I have read it, it isn't a long book, but the action never stops from the moment Richard Hannay hears the tale of his unknown visitor.

Hannay is the key, both to the Thirty Nine Steps and to the way the Grange works, he is you and me! A mining engineer, bored out of his skull with the social whirl and on the brink of chucking the whole lot and heading off in search of another adventure, then adventure kicks open the door and crashes in - come and have a go!

He isn't a trained agent, anything but, but he's quick, intelligent, he has life experience and can handle himself. Richard Hannay is a sort of Everyman hero, you or I could reasonably slip into his shoes and take the journey he does.

That's where the idea of The Grange starts, any one of the team could be you or me, we all have our talents and given the chance to rise to the occasion would probably give it a go and discover something about ourselves we didn't know...

Steel, Langhers, Josie, even Hannah with her finger on the Morse key, none of them have a military background, but they all have that something Jardine spotted and brought out. He created the Grange to develop teamwork and individual thinking. Initiative or whatever you want to call it - he wouldn't call it blue-sky thinking;to him that's a vast blue emptiness with nothing going on. Bill Jardine would consider membership of the Cloud Appreciation Society, clouds are a sign of activity on a grand scale. Just what he's looking for, along with the necessity of paying his way.

A group of ordinary people working in an unusual situation, all it needs to bring out that something extra, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Teamwork, flexibility and initiative, looking for that edge to keep the show on the road. Check out the team at the Grange in the first three Grange Novels, Iceline, Control:Escape and What You Ask For ( WYAF is still in the raw draft stage, free to download.)

You couldn't make it up

Pretty much an ordinary day really, plodding through the routine of the day job and fell into conversation, and a story unfolded. Ten minutes later after listening to the twist and turns, the scheming and shenanigans I'm shaking my head and wondering about the impossibility of writing fiction, searching for that elusive story that will grab the reader's attention from the first line and hold them the last full stop and The End.

How many times have I considered a plot line and decided that it was just too fanciful, lobbed the idea in the mental dustbin and then been handed a slice of reality that makes the fiction sound solid and mundane, boring even?

I really should take the words of Sherlock Holmes to heart, that life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man can invent. He pushed the idea further, strip away everything, peel back all the layers and what you have left, however strange it might seem will probably be the truth.

Coming up against that, should I worry that I might write a tale so strange it would be unbelievable?
That's definitely a NO, so let's bring Lewis Carroll into the picture as well, and start off with half a dozen impossible things before breakfast.

Kick off the day with that, check the batteries in my tape recorder, (I have a Pearlcorder stuffed in my bag, with the little micro-cassettes) and see where it goes.

Expect weirdness, was the excellent advice I had the other day, I'm going to take it; the material should be useful for any number of stories.

Another week and another freebie Friday

The last Friday of the month, and that means Freebie Friday at Indies Unlimited and the last few days of the smashwords summer/winter promotion, free ebooks and discounts until the 31st July. Check out great writing by first time and seasoned authors.

The Grange Novels are included in the promotion, grab yourself a copy of Iceline, normally $2.99, free with code SW100. Control Escape, normally $2.99, also free with SW100 .

The latest in the series, still undergoing final checks and editing, remains a free download, What You Ask For, Nanowrimo entry and winner 2012. It crossed the 50000 word target in twenty nine days, and set the bench mark for this years personal Nanowrimo challenge.  In the meantime, I've proofreading to do, obvious bloopers to spot and change -if you find any in the raw draft of What You Ask For, drop me a line  here or at cheekyseagull.co.uk .

Ideas drift through the grey matter all the time, and some of them make it on to a scrap of paper, but that jotting may bear no relationship to the work in progress advancing across the page, that's the fun of it, never sure what twist of the imagination will throw the story off in a completely new direction. Don't miss the next exciting episode.... I'd better get on with writing it?

Still giving it away!

Free eBooks | Freebie Friday | Indies Unlimited | Indies Unlimited

Freebie Friday and the Smashwords summer/winter promotion, have a look at great new writing through Indies Unlimited and free ebooks by the bucketload at  smashwords.com and the Grange novels, Iceline Control Escape are available free with the discount code SW100 and What You Ask For, the Nanowrimo 2012 winner,  remains free to download here.  Help yourself, have a good read and chill out this summer with some great new writing.

Summer goodies

Summer Kobo-fest | Indies Unlimited, check out what's on offer today, there is a link in the article to a conversation between Laura Boris to be found here,

Control Escape at Kobo here; Iceline at Kobo here. 

Shameless book plug encouraged by high temperatures in England, slowly grilling with the offer of plenty of page turning before you need to turn over and do the other side.

Will it be possible to work out who read this years blockbuster on the beach by the  uneven fore and aft tanning and the size of the pale square on the face  matching the size of the tablet or e-reader?

Smashwords' Summer/Winter promotion still rattling through July with all the Grange Novels available for free; download code SW100 for Iceline and Control Escape (enter the code at the checkout when you click to buy).

What You Ask For is available as a completed draft in a free download here at smashwords.com.

What are you waiting for, it's the weekend, the sun is shining (well, it is here in Yorkshire) and there are books to read!

Freeby Friday

Free eBooks | Freebie Friday | Indies Unlimited | Indies Unlimited  The weekly free ebook fest at Indies Unlimited is here again, stock up on your holiday reading, get something for the daily commute or vegging out for the week-end.

Starting Over, again…

Half way through July and the Grange Novels are signed up for the Smashwords Summer/Winter promotion, an annual feast of discounted and free ebooks available through smashwords.com and the happy campers at Camp Nanowrimo are wrestling with their word counts in the jungles of their imagination. For myself, the next Grange novel is starting to ferment somewhere in the edge of my mind although at the moment there is little more than a scribbled collection of random words, some of which were scrawled across the page in the with eyes and brain barely open.
The point of this, just to let you know, there are more stories on the way and if you haven’t met Bill Jardine, Josie Burke, Steel, Langhers and the rest of the team from the Grange catch up with them at smashwords.com in Iceline, Control Escape, and What You Ask For.
What You Ask For is recently completed as a draft and is currently undergoing editing and proofreading and is free to download, Iceline and Control Escape are free until the end of July with the code SW100 at Smashwords, formatted for most ereaders.
Bag some good reading and be part of the action,