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.
When you look at a scientific paper, the first thing you need to look for is the sample size. If it is large, that's good. Second, you look for the confidence interval. If the confidence interval is low, the data is suspect and the conclusions are suspect. You might ask, what about papers where the data is not available. Any scientist who hides their data is trying to make a conclusion without any support. A paper without attached data is worthless. Fourth (third is the data), look at the event that is being proven--it is highly unusual for a paper to be published for an event that can't be proven by the scientific method, but it's happened before. Fifth, apply logic.
I know logic is the third method to know truth, but logic can be used in every field to test the truth. For example, the salmon diaxonene paper that was put out by lawyers noted that salmon in salmon farms had about 10 parts per billion of diaxonene while salmon in the wild had 2 parts per billion of diazonene. In this case, we use logic. In every study of chemicals and toxicity (or any effect), you look for concentration (dosage) and effect. The dosage of diozanene that is required to show an effect on a human child is about 10 parts per million and that's pushing it. Ten parts per billion is meaningless in terms of dosage and effect on a human (or any other animal). In other words, the writers of the paper were counting on the lack of scientific knowledge of journalists and reporters in reporting that salmon in the wild and in farms have different levels of the chemical diaxonene. It worked, most journalists and reporters are clueless about the most basic science--they were fooled and continue to be fooled. I'll write more about logic in the future.
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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