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 primacy of witness is the first and most important test of the legal-historical method. If you understand this method, you can understand historical proof. Historians don't use anything except primary and secondary documents--at first. Once they understand the times, they may move to tertiary documents from the time (or later) to see what other historians thought about the period and then to quatriary documents (from the time) to gain an appreciation for the period.
For example, Oliver Twist is not a good historical document. It is a good document for understanding what a person thought during the time and to understand what people were willing to spend money to read--at the time. It is a source more about people's thoughts and commercial ideas rather than any information about the culture or times. It is not a record of history, but it is a source for some historical information--mostly opinion. That doesn't mean it is not a good document to get a feel for the times, but any historian will recognize it is not a history but an opinion. It is only the opinion of one person. It doesn't represent the era or the ideas of the average or the not so average person.
This is indeed a problem in looking at the wrong documents in time. For example, the writers during an historical period many times come from a single strata of the society. In ancient Greece, the writers were mainly men from the upper class. In ancient Japan, the writers were women from the noble class. Today, many writers come from the very educated class. In the Victorian era, many successful writers were upper to middle class women. The Victorian era was definitely not an era of dead white men as writers, and neither is the modern era.
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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