My Writing Process; A Blog Tour of sorts

A couple of months ago, my fellow author friend Jade Kerrion invited me to participate in an informal blog tour that has been making the rounds in the writing world.

Jade is the author of the award-winning, science-fiction series Double Helix and has a wonderful website full of useful information for writers. I love the world and the characters she created in her Double Helix novels, which cross over into the fantasy and superhero subgenres, and can thoroughly recommend them as great reads.

The rules of the blog tour dictate that I answer four questions and tag three more authors to continue the process. As this blog tour has been going on for a while and I’m late to the party, everyone under the sun has now done it. So I will commit the ultimate sacrilege and end this blogging chain letter. Yes, I am the official terminator! *evil cackle* Ahem. 

 

1. What am I working on?

I am a sixth of the way into writing the fourth book in my supernatural thriller series Seventeen. I’m also rewriting the first novel in a humorous fantasy series I originally penned in 2006. I am planning to write a few stories, some of which I will offer as freebies to my newsletter subscribers. I’ve also been busy revamping my website, which needed a fresh look after two years.

 

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Jade was the first person to officially compare the Seventeen series to “James Bond meets Highlander”. This simile has since been used by many other readers, much to my delight.

Seventeen started life as a writing experiment. Several years ago, while I was still submitting my humorous fantasy novel to agents and publishers in the UK and the US, I set myself three related challenges.

a. Pen a short story, a format I’m not overly familiar with.

b. Do it in a genre I’ve never written in before.

c. Submit it to a competition.

“17”, a supernatural thriller short story, was thus born. It was a finalist in a popular international competition and eventually became “Soul Meaning”, the first novel in the series.  

Although I’m a hard-core fan of fast-paced, action-packed adventure novels and movies, I never thought I could write in that genre. But the origin of this story was so special that I could not help but give it my best. Imagine the number 17 written in red paint on a black marker stone, on a sandbank in the middle of a lagoon thousands of miles from here. Imagine the voice of the main protagonist introducing himself by telling you that he has just suffered a death and survived it.

The story came first, the genre second. Seventeen belongs to the larger umbrella of paranormal fiction, within which I chose the subgenre supernatural thriller. It can also be classed as urban fantasy and action-adventure with a supernatural or paranormal twist.

Why is Seventeen different from others in this subgenre? It’s about immortals who are to some extent mortal. Its underlying premise, which will be revealed in later books, is I believe unique. It’s written with a degree of intelligence and true science that readers have truly enjoyed. It has surprised many who never thought they could like this story style, thus confirming what I have always suspected about the series, which is that it has cross genre appeal.

 

3. Why do I write what I write? 

I still occasionally ask myself this question. Like I explained in the previous answer, I started out writing humorous fantasy.

Seventeen was a surprise and a challenging one at that. Although the series contains a paranormal element by virtue of its unusual beginnings, my focus was very much on producing strong characters, great action, and story lines that would have readers turning the pages late into the night.

As a fan of thrillers, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to inject that “magical” factor that grabs people and entices them to read on, foregoing sleep and even food.

It helps that I’m a fan of action-adventure stories and films, and have a vivid visual imagination. It helps that I have a background in science and am fascinated by new technologies. It also helps that I love manga and anime, and have more recently become a fan of manhwa.

I write what I write because it combines all these interests and hence help me produce stories that have a broad appeal.

 

4. How does my writing process work?

I am what author James Scott Bell has termed a “tweener”, i.e. I’m part plotter, part pantser.

In terms of the plot, before I commit to putting fingers to keyboard, I usually know the beginning, the end, bits of the middle, who is involved, and what the general stakes/“what if” questions. The rest of it comes with the flow and what the characters “dictate” to me. Most of my writing is very organic that way and I often don’t know where I’m going to end up between the major scenes.

For example, Soul Meaning (Seventeen Book 1) started with the death of my protagonist, I sort of knew where I wanted him to be at the end of his adventure, I had “visualised” the biggest action sequences in the story (Boston, Washington, Gif-sur-Yvette, Zurich, Vienna, Vilanec, Prague, Amberg, and the fictional island near Sicily), I had a general idea of the principal characters who would be involved (although several just turned up and surprised me) and I had posed the questions essential to the plot:

a. What if immortals have lived side by side with humans for millennia and carved out the future of the weaker race by influencing its most noteworthy historical events?

b. What if a group of powerful immortals decided that they wanted to rule the world again?

c. What if the “pariah” of the immortal societies ended up being its hero and saved the day?

My next step consists of doing basic research on the science and technology that will feature in the story, particularly if they form a strong element of the plot. For Greene’s Calling (Seventeen Book 3), this involved going to the British Geological Survey in Keyworth, Nottingham, to talk to an expert in a specific field of the geological sciences. For me, the science and technology has to either exist, been hypothesised about, is currently in the experimental phase, or is within the realm of the possible within the next decade.

The third step surprises a lot of people who have previously interviewed me about my writing process. I go on iTunes and compile a playlist for the book. This is a time consuming but essential process. My imagination is very much influenced by what I see, hear, and feel. Although music is an auditory stimulus, it most definitely makes me “see”, “feel”, and “imagine” things much more easily than I would otherwise do. It’s like listening to your favourite song. The commonest reason for having a favourite song is because you associate it with a particular life experience or event, be it a happy or a sad one. Music “links” me to the story and gets me in the “zone”. And a lot of the songs on the playlist end up inspiring entire scenes within it.

I then sit down and start from the beginning. I am a linear writer, in that I go from A to B and so on and so forth until I get to Z. I very rarely start in the middle and even more rarely write random scenes that I then link up afterward. However, after reading James Scott Bell’s “Write From the Middle” a few months ago, I am trying a new approach with the fourth book in the series.

A lot of my ideas come while writing and are mostly sparked by the more detailed research I do in the midst of the process. I’ll read up on a topic, find an interesting article, spot something fascinating within it, read some more on this new subject. Next thing I know, I’ve added another twist to the plot. This is the part of writing I find the most exciting, along with getting to know the characters better. You never know what might happen and what paths your characters may lead you down.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my writing world. Feel free to comment or ask questions!