Announcement: My editor sent a round of emails last night concerning the back cover materials. That included the book teaser and the author bio. They looked good. They also sent the covers for the individual novels. I'll put up the covers when I can. The proposed 3 in1 cover and info can be found at www.ancientlight.com. I'll keep you updated. I should have three new books out soon.
Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I'll keep you informed along the way.
The four plus one basic rules I employ when writing:
1. Don't confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don't show (or tell) everything.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
All novels have five discrete parts:
1. The initial scene (the beginning)
2. The rising action
3. The climax
4. The falling action
5. The dénouement
The theme statement of my newest novel, Valeska, is this: An agent of the organization becomes involved with a vampire girl during a mission, she becomes dependent on the agent, and she is redeemed.
Here is my proposed cover for Valeska:
The purpose of a novel is to reveal the protagonist and usually the protagonist's helper, the author needs to place them in circumstance that allows them to reveal themselves. The means can be conversation, exploration, discovery, other's conversation, confession, accidental discovery.
There are three ways to know truth: the scientific method, the historical-witness method, and logic. The scientific method can only be used to prove repeatable events. If we are using the proper method (scientific) to prove the proper type of event (repeatable), then the next question is the reliability of the data.
Having data is always good, that means the researcher did an actual experiment. Many papers in the modern era are written by lawyers and not scientists. These papers tend to have no data at all or their sample size is very small. Just to help you: a sample size less than ten--that means less than ten tests or experiments conducted--is meaningless. You can't really determine a confidence interval correctly with less than ten. Ten or more, and you can begin to determine if your experiment asked the right question. One hundred or more samples, and you are beginning to enter a potential proof. A thousand or more and you have some standing in fact. This is all based in statistical confidence.
If you have a scientific paper with no or very little data, it is meaningless. Many environmental papers I've read and papers on autism are written by lawyers with no data. The famous thermisol autism papers were written without data and by lawyers. The famous salmon dizonene papers were written by lawyers and without data. If the issue is in the courts there is a very high probability the science for it was concocted by lawyers to support their case and not from scientific research--that's just my observation over the years as a scientist.
More tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
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