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 first test of a Legal-Historical method proof is the primacy of witness. Witnesses are judged as primary (eye witness), secondary (hearsay witness), and tertiary (everything else). A tertiary witness is everything else. That means that every history book you have ever read is a tertiary witness. That means that everything that isn't directly from an eyewitness (either direct or hearsay) is a tertiary witness. A tertiary witness has almost no value in history. Every history book you have ever read is considered a poor historical witness. Historians never use a tertiary witness--let me rephrase that--good historians never use a tertiary witness.
Good historians take and use only primary and secondary witnesses (documents) in the development of history. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of primary and secondary witnesses. Most documents from the past are tertiary.
I'll write more about this, but before I move on, let me mention one more category. I also note a quatriary category. This is a document completely removed from history. For example, a document that purports to be history can be considered primary, secondary, or tertiary. A document that has no direct connection to history, I call a quatriary witness. This is a document that is opinion or fiction. These documents have value to historians and can be studied for their historical value. For example, the Egyptian Book of the Dead is a book of spells to be used by the dead to enter the afterlife. This is a quatriary document--of no value as direct history, but of value as historical information on the ideas of the Egyptians. An opinion piece from a paper or Oliver Twist are both quatriary. They are the opinions of a person in history and not necessarily historical. You can judge all documents and witnesses in history as: primary, secondary, tertiary, or quartriary.
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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