Mea Culpa! -- An author's dark secret

Almost every writer is guilty of it though many will deny and even fabricate long and complex stories to cover up the fact—after all we are writers famed for a high dosage of imagination. Sometimes we’re so clever we actually convince ourselves of our innocence.
Hah!
The truth and bitter reality will eventually reassert itself and force us to face the facts and neither denial nor sheer bloody bullheaded self-induced amnesia (for which I am not guilty of, no sirree) will ever get us away from the shocking reality.
Almost every writer; and that includes you Mrs. J.C. from Hammersmith, VA. (Aha, you didn’t think I’d notice that little burp on the Quillsquatters page did you?) I repeat, every writer from the icicle-dipped-in-heated-ink-on-sheets-of-ice Inuit to the scratch-with-a-nail-on-a-stone-block Falkland’s sheep herder is guilty of this one thing.
We all have at least one skeleton in our laptops.
Shamefully I admit I am as guilty as the rest of them and I’ve attempted for longer than most to keep this affair secret. Since I was eighteen years old when I was a mere uneducated and easily corrupted teen I’ve gone out of my way to divert any attempt to pry this secret out of my wonderfully electric pink and fluffy closet. After all isn’t it much cozier huddled up with the cheap Walmart parka’s and worn out wellingtons than it would be bouncing around bare-naked in the full light of day?
Did I say bare-naked?
Uhm, please excuse me. I didn’t mean to put it quite like that, after all it’s not anything to do with baring…, well..., baring one’s soul perhaps.
Okay; dammit, I’ll confess to being guilty of having something I am truly ashamed of. Although in this case it’s not so much a skeleton in the laptop since such things didn’t exist at the time of my deed (laptops that is—skeletons have been around a little longer I’ve been told.) So it’s more like an apparition in a typewriter; a cadaver in the keys or a revenant in the ribbon. An act so heinous even a liberal apologist such as myself still cringes at the memory.
Perhaps this acknowledgement and an act of contrition will bring about a cleansing of my soul and free the overburdening weight of guilt which has hung over me for the last thirty-two years.
And so I announce now…
*cough*
Ah, a glass of water please.
Yes.
Thank you, So, that’s it…right?
What?
I didn’t say anything—
Oh dear, well…



Here goes…





I just want to say…









iwrotethisfirstnovelanditiscompleteandutterlyembarrassingtrash .

Okay! There, now you know and the first one to laugh gets…gets…gets a free copy of it. Hah! So there.
I don’t mean the first “it’s the first I’ve published first novel”. Cyberius III was my first published novel and was actually my fifth written novel though it is currently “out of print” and unavailable from the publisher; a somewhat odd state of affairs for an electronic publication but hey, what do I know, I’m only the author.
Poseidon VII was actually my seventh completed novel and Dante I my tenth. (Novels two to four are either still being edited or are difficult sales to shrinking markets.) I’m talking about the foremost, truly mind-numbing first ever typed words on paper kind of story. (Trust me I’m not even going to include the cringe, curl up and die stories I had to write for English class. My adolescent stories can be most easily equated to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Vogon’s Poetry.
The thing is; it is true isn’t it? All writers have first writtens or experimentals which we keep locked in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet, stuffed under the bed, hidden in an old shoebox crammed into the bottom of the bathroom cleaning products under-the-sink storage. Yellowed copy for which we’d die if it was espied and read by even our nearest and dearest; yet somehow is too precious to offload into the nearest furnace or shredder. (Throwing it in a trashcan is out of the question, some one may pull it out to read.)
My no-title masterpiece was a glowing example of a Marty Stu. One shy little nobody (with brown hair, glasses and a wicked smile) building a worldwide secret force for good and saving the entire world from nuclear destruction while simultaneously re-educating the world leaders in the ways of peace and harmonious living.
*ick*
Think about it. Would you really buy a book which started with the sentence:

White edged sky edged toward sleepy Houndston as dawn chased away the lingering shadows of another sleepless night.

It’s okay to scream, I understand. If you haven’t clawed your eyes out by now it’s safe to open them again.
With a twisted and totally unrealistic plot this amazing science fiction/action thriller suffered from multiple name changes and physical characteristics of the secondary characters; superhuman capabilities of a main character who could fix anything and never made a mistake; randomly moving body parts; intensely yucky pseudo romancey scenes and probably every single mistake it was possible to make in all its literary forms. With camels regularly coming to a sweet end in the roving dunes of the Arabian desserts the Novel with No Title was my very own Eye of Argon simply waiting for the chance to entertain myriad SF convention attendees along with three pints of beer and a brandy—triple shot on ice with some white fluffy cream and a bagel.
Fortunately this two-hundred and forty-three page; single spaced; yellow aged; typewritten monstrosity is the only embarrassing attempt I’ll admit to. Having learned enough from the one failed attempt to edit, re-edit and edit again up to the tenth generation edit. Yet, I find I’m still unable to completely give up on no-title and every eighth year I pull it out from the cobwebs and add another gallon of red ink or two to the edits I’ve already added to the impossible.
Truthfully, in spite of the terror of seeing what my original writing skills amounted to I am still quite proud of that piece of work. I know it will never be published. Even after massive edits and rewrites it would be simpler just to write a completely different book with a similar story idea.
The important thing is I did write it. I managed a ninety-seven thousand word typescript, plotted, planned, researched and completed it. And you know what? It’s not something which a lot of people can do. Completing even a cringe-worthy manuscript which has no chance of being published brought me a great sense of satisfaction—not to mention the boost it gave to my writer esteem. Once I knew I could complete a novel it became easier to do the next, and the next.
Also there is a certain amount of self-teaching to be found within the historical first time. Like the highly embarrassing first time sex, reviewing the fumbling and bumblings of my first typescript reminds me that I wasn’t always as proficient a writer as I am now and helps me relate more easily to today’s beginning authors.
It is a very humbling experience to look back and see how little I knew then compared to how much I know now. Encouraging too since it’s similar to looking back over your baby and childhood photos and seeing how you grew and developed. My one major regret in life is how in a fit of teenaged pique I threw away dozens of notebooks containing over nine years of childhood poetry—I’d turned into an adult, see, and didn’t need their constant reminders of how silly and childish I’d been.
How many authors have closets like mine (minus the electric pink) and their secret not to be discovered first writtens? I don’t know, after all some skeletons may look better in a closet with a big red bow tie holding them firmly into place—with the occasional, locked in the bedroom airing.
What do you think?

S.J. Willing
Proud Author of the PIACT undercover agent series.

S.J.Willing
S.J. Willing's Forum
Dante I
Poseidon VII

In the Spotlight: Dante I

As our way of saying thank you for the amazing, wonderful, fabulous response to Beyond the Veil’s Save Our SJ fund drive—and to give you a taste of what all the fuss is about—today we’re posting the jacket copy and an excerpt from SJ’s newest release, Dante I. Thank you again from all of us, and especially SJ!

Their love could save the planet—or blow it all to hell.

PIACT Undercover Agents, Book 3

Two years on the Separatist-controlled planet of Dante I, and undercover PIACT agent Tomas Valcino is no closer to contacting the underground rebellion. As if imminent mission failure isn’t bad enough, he can’t shake his lust for the prefect’s beautiful daughter, Yumi Rebyj. The distraction must not tear him away from duty.

Every time Tomas’s eyes find her, Yumi’s insides melt like the molten planet below them. But she’s got her hands full leading the rebels, caring for her sick father, and fending off the Separatist leader’s advances. Plus, she already knows that Tomas isn’t who he says he is. She just isn’t sure whose side he’s on.

An assassination attempt drives Tomas to take Yumi into hiding. In close quarters, all is stripped away. Secrets. Lies. And clothes.

Then the discovery of a new technology drives the Separatists to step up their campaign of cruelty to expose the rebels, once and for all. Tomas and Yumi’s connection is Dante I’s only hope—but it could be too little, too late.

Warning: Hunks, Heroines and major warfare in close quarters—and locked cells. Ahem. We won’t forget the pair of panties that bravely gave its all in the making of this novel.

Chapter One

Yumi Rebyj closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the man beneath her. Tomas Valcino, a special metals consultant, had arrived on Dante I a mere two years ago. He’d driven Yumi crazy every day since, simply by being around. It must be illegal the way his muscles rippled as he moved; just watching him made her shiver with lust. When he gazed at her, those pale blue eyes never failed to send a tingle running through her body. Still, none of that could compare to having him in bed. Now that was—

“Would you like me to put it in now?”

Startled, Yumi opened her eyes and peered over the railing. Lying on the floor below the catwalk, long black hair splayed against the steel floor, Tomas poked amongst the circuitry of the Secondary Mining Terminal. In his free hand he held a datacard loaded with clean datacubes. His puzzled look as he watched her made her blush. What would he think if he knew the daydreams she had about him? Not that they would be anything other than daydreams. Between running the Bolgër—the resistance forces—managing Dante I’s constant flux of mining skippers, and Tomas’s very obvious lack of interest in her, Yumi very much doubted her dreams would come true.

Suppressing a sigh she leaned back, staring up for a moment at the rock above her. Living in an asteroid circling the molten planet below had a lot of advantages, but unfortunately being able to see anything other than rock wasn’t one of them. Forcing her heart and mind to calm she looked down again.

Tomas still looked at her, expecting an answer to his query.

Yumi glanced over to the main control panel. Zshanna stood there, a curious smile playing over her lips as she waited for Yumi’s directions. Damn. Yumi knew from that smile she’d just told Zshanna far too much, given away too many thoughts. Zshanna, a Poseidian by birth, may be one of the most proficient data operatives Yumi had, but the tech’s psyche abilities could be embarrassing as well as extremely useful. Zshanna had filtered out almost all of the Separatist infiltrators who attempted to worm their way into the Bolgër. Without her abilities the resistance would have been crushed years ago. Of course, it also meant Yumi barely held a secret she could call her own.

There had been only two people Zshanna couldn’t get a fix on. Both were natural Melds with thought patterns so stubbornly fixed and immutable Zshanna was unable to single out anything but the most basic thoughts. The first, five years ago, had turned out to be a Separatist spy who eliminated several of the Bolgër cells and the Federation agents assigned to them, before he was discovered. The second was Tomas, a man with an ironclad history woven in the Ultranet. A history that was a little too perfect. There were also the odd things he did now and then, almost as if he were looking for the resistance forces. The Bolgër kept a careful eye on him, taking no chances that he might be a second Separatist spy.

Still, after one intense session where Zshanna attempted a Meld breakthrough she determined, other than personal things, Tomas’s absolute hatred of the Separatists. The images had been enough to satisfy Zshanna that Tomas posed no threat to the Bolgër. They knew too little to invite him into their fold, and enough not to be concerned about his poking around, so the surveillance on him was light. This was great, not only because of his good looks, but he’d also turned out to be one of the best damn SpecMets Yumi had ever known. In the two years since Tomas arrived he’d improved the special metals extraction and purification process by almost two hundred percent. Incidentally saving a few lives at the same time by meeting the absurdly high Separatist quotient demands. Personal feelings aside, Yumi, and the colony, couldn’t afford to lose him.

She couldn’t afford to lose Zshanna either. If the Separatists ever discovered Zshanna’s abilities the Poseidian would be in the grunge tank, brain dissected, faster than a plasma bubble burst. Yumi would die before she let that happen.

“Ma’am?” Tomas asked again.

“Yes, just a moment, Tomas,” Yumi blurted out, amazed he didn’t show even a trace of impatience. She became too easily distracted nowadays, maybe because the uprising was so close. “Zshanna, how are the multiplex Riener circuits doing?”

“Around seventy-five percent optimum,” Zshanna answered, grinning back. “They’ll hold if the Secondary burns out again.”

“Okay, Tomas, you can put it in.” Yumi almost cursed, blushing bright red again. Fortunately Tomas had slipped under the unit and couldn’t see her embarrassment. She definitely needed a break from Dante I and the oppressive Separatist culture. Time away, with someone really sexy—like Tomas.

They were rewarded when the Secondary hummed gently back to life. Yumi relaxed a little. It wasn’t a vital piece of the colony’s systems since it mainly worked as a backup in case the Primary failed. Experience, though, had taught Yumi not to delay repairs even on the secondaries.

“Well done everyone,” she congratulated them. “Repaired in less than five hours and we didn’t have to call the Techs in. Good work!”

Her own work had begun though. The Secondary had been sabotaged and she had to find the saboteur before the occupying Separatists did. She’d already set several cells of the Bolgër on the task. It certainly wasn’t the work of the underground resistance themselves. The sabotage had been sloppy and the Secondary of too little importance to destroy. This had been something personal against the Separatists, through a relatively easy target.

She watched Tomas edge out from under the terminal, and the familiar feeling of lust coursed through her. When this was all done, maybe…

“Ah, I see you have it working. Good.” Colonel Marcus Saeger walked up to her smiling. “And I have several pieces of good news for you.”

Yumi grimaced. Good news to a Separatist colonel wasn’t normally something people wanted to hear. Not that she had much choice nowadays. Ever since her father’s illness—losing the supply of Federation anti-aging drugs had finally taken its toll—she’d been called in more often than normal lately to represent him on matters of colony policy. Not for the first time she wished Father hadn’t surrendered so easily to Separatist rule. Yes, they probably would have all died trying to stem a Separatist invasion. Surely, though, it would have been preferable to dying like this, one day at a time.

With a shock, Yumi realized this was the seventh year of Separatist occupation in the Dante system. During those years she’d seen their population steadily decline despite a steady influx of workers. Only seven thousand now lived in The Rock, instead of the nine thousand there used to be. She’d heard rumors the losses were even greater on Dante V, or The Fiver, as her people called the frozen planetoid that spun in the lonely fifth orbit. All the losses, it was pretty obvious to everyone, could be traced to Marcus’s administration, his treatment and frequent execution of Dante’s colonists.

“You know I’m always interested in your good news,” Yumi lied. As she spoke she walked toward the Prefect’s office—officially her father’s office though Yumi would be inheriting it soon. She tried not to think about that too often. “So what’s happened?”

Marcus brushed a hand through his hair. The shocking red color, like the dusky red tone to his skin, had been genetically induced to increase his natural resistance to solar radiation. Marcus’s home, Stallas VI, was one of the nine foundation worlds of the Separatist Dynasty. Its people had been engineered to survive on the planet surface in the high radiation system.

“Well,” Marcus said. “We found your saboteur last night. She was trying to stow away on a shuttle flight to The Fiver.” Marcus spoke loudly, making his presence felt amongst the nervous Control Room staff. “One of your Techs, Stela Magrow, seems she had some complaint with our policies.”

Damn! Yumi swore at herself. She should have seen this happening. The policy Stela felt unhappy about occurred five months ago. The distraught Tech had filed charges against five Separatist soldiers who’d spent one night raping her—simply because they were bored. The charges were instantly dismissed by the Separatist legal system as trivial. The Separatists even refused to undergo tests to determine the father of her unborn child.

Yumi, like every other Dantian, hated the Separatist policies that left Separatist soldiers free to terrorize the colonists. She knew she’d been stupid, but now it was too late. She should have smuggled Stela out of system months ago to one of the Federation-owned safe quarters the Bolgër maintained. Then again, there’d been no physical contact with the Federation for almost five years and no radio contact for almost two. Getting Stela to safe quarters, which had more than likely been compromised, would have killed everyone involved.

Yumi was left with the task of rescuing Stela from the grunge room and hiding the poor woman from the Separatists somewhere in the belly of The Rock. Probably with the small Bolgër army she had in The Crypts. God knew how they’d managed to maintain their forces there for so long without anyone noticing.

Yumi turned into a small tube-like corridor. Here the walls were highly polished, indicating the tunnel had been cut by the V.T.M., the superbly efficient Vinder Tunnel Drill. A few more yards down and she stopped in front of the Prefect’s office. Marcus, with that damned superior smile on his face, stopped with her. Short of taking a small tank into the heart of Separatist territory there was very little she could do for Stela. Unless, and it was rare, Zshanna could find a bribable guard.

“I’m glad you found her.” Yumi smiled as the doors automatically slid open. It was a lie, of course, but she daren’t let him know how she truly felt. “We need more manpower on the ore-smelting line. She can join the other prisoners there. It won’t take more than a few days for her to regret her actions.”
Yumi walked into the outer office, passing Vhal and Melindra. The two assistants sat behind their desks busily working on the latest ore shipment and mining figures. Their desks, like most of the furnishing in Dante I, were fabricated from crushed rock obtained from the tunnel drills. Here and there within the highly polished surface of the dark-gray stone was the sparkle of silver, copper and gold.

“I’m afraid Stela can’t join the line,” Marcus said. Yumi’s stomach twisted, anticipating his next words with dread. “She died an hour ago while under questioning.” Marcus made sure Vhal and Melindra heard everything he said.

Stiffly, barely able to keep her temper, Yumi walked the last few steps to the inner office in silence. Touching her fingers to the lockpad she stepped back and let the door slide open. Once inside, with the door closed, she turned to face Marcus. Only sheer determination prevented her from shouting at him.
“I wish you would refrain from this continued depletion of our personnel resources.” She spoke calmly in spite of seething with every word. “We’re twelve percent undermanned as it is and we’ve had no replacements from The Fiver, or out of system, for over six months.”

Marcus, unruffled by her words, simply sat on the edge of the desk and looked at her. A knowing smile pasted on his face. A stupid, aquiline face she wanted to slap silly.

“The second piece of good news,” Marcus continued, “is your father has given us permission to marry.”
“Father has what!” Yumi held onto a tall cabinet next to her. Weakness washed over her. What had he done to her father! No. Doctor Lasky ranked as Second Lieutenant in the Bolgër. He’d never let a Separatist, even a colonel, near her father. Not while her father remained too ill to care for himself. Walking carefully to the desk, Yumi went behind it and sat in her father’s chair. She refused to show her fear to this murderer. “I understood Dr. Lasky’s orders were no visitors,” Yumi said. “I’m surprised he let you in.”
“Dr. Lasky is in the infirmary.” Marcus’s face held a look of, Yumi assumed, mock sympathy. “Several members of the Bolgër assaulted him last night. He’ll be lucky to survive.”

Yumi shook her head sadly. It wouldn’t be the first time Separatist soldiers had disguised themselves as resistance fighters, just enough of a disguise to confuse the few witnesses who’d see the attack.

Marcus’s men always made sure there were reliable witnesses to make the Bolgër unfavorable to the frightened colonists. “I took the liberty of assigning Dr. Krog to your father,” Marcus added. “He assured me a short visit wouldn’t tax your father too much. Just long enough for your father to understand my arguments for a strong male leader in the colony. Appreciating that, he agreed to our wedding.”

“Ah.” Yumi nodded. In other words Marcus’s men hospitalized Dr. Lasky so Marcus could install his favorite toady, Dr. Krog, in Lasky’s place. Then Marcus had the freedom to torture her father until he agreed to the wedding. It had to have been torture. Yumi knew her father enough to know he’d never go against Dante I’s deeply ingrained custom of Prefect inheritance. Neither would the workers accept non-family inheritance—which was why Marcus forced her father to approve of this marriage.

Seriously concerned for her father’s safety, and that of the colony, Yumi shuffled the papers on the desk. Trying to calm her nerves, she filed the unneeded ones in a drawer—she’d sort them later. For now she daren’t allow her thoughts to wander through dangerous assumptions. She needed to think clearly. The stakes in this deadly game of occupation and resistance had suddenly tripled.

“So when is the wedding date?” Yumi continued as steadily as she could. “How long do I have to get the wedding dress ready?” By how much did she need to accelerate the rebellion preparations?

“Three weeks,” Marcus said, looking way too smug. “My Procurer is already working on your wedding chains.” He took the remaining papers from her hand and scanned through them as he spoke. “You should be proud. General Tarug himself will be arriving on the Ultimate tomorrow. He’s decided to stay for the wedding.” He extracted a couple of the reports, folded them and put them in his pocket, then dropped the rest on the table.

Damn. She’d have to see if Vhal and Melindra could work out which reports were missing and duplicate them.

Obviously deciding business was over, Marcus leaned forward. He grasped her around the back of her neck and forced a hard, unwelcome kiss on her. Stunned, Yumi couldn’t react immediately because Marcus stepped away before she could brain him. Being out of reach and unable to cause him physical damage was, in itself, probably a good thing.

“I’ll call on you later,” he told her as he stepped toward the door. “I’m going to start organizing this colony the way it needs to be done.”

Organizing the colony? Chains? For her wedding?

Yumi shuddered. The chains meant Marcus planned for a typical Separatist ceremony. Yumi couldn’t let it happen. She refused to be given to his best men the night before the wedding then dragged to the ceremony the following day—bruised, beaten and very naked. In a true Separatist marriage the woman became little more than a slave.

Yumi gritted her teeth. Thanks to the Federation’s anti-aging drugs she’d had seventy-three years to learn how to control what her father called her hair-trigger temper. Somehow they’d accelerate the rebellion by three weeks. The only trigger Yumi intended to pull then was one that blasted a bullet through Marcus’s heart…


Ahem. Dying to read more? You don’t need to go quite that far. Simply click here to order the book from My Bookstore and More.

Thursday Thirteen: Thirteen Reasons to Save our SJ

SJ Willing, one of our favorite people and the author of the frame story for Dunvegas, is in trouble. Five years after pancreas surgery that was supposed to fix things, but didn't, his pancreas has shut down completely. With proper medication, he can thrive. Without it, he will die. Soon. The problem is he doesn't have insurance to cover it and the meds cost over $250 a month.
The rest of us at Beyond the Veil are doing a number of things to help out. We'll announce them as they go live. But there's one thing you can do right now. If you've ever read Dunvegas--or if you're even thinking about it--please, click on the new Donate button we've added to the Dunvegas cover page. Here are thirteen reasons why:

1. Without SJ's tale of Roger Ing and Amanda Uhndame there wouldn't be a Dunvegas to enjoy.

2. In the close quarters of Dante 1, SJ's most recent sexy futuristic romance about the undercover agents of PIACT, everything the hero and heroine have is stripped away. Secrets. Lies. Clothes.

3. Dante 1 provides a happily ever after for its hero and heroine, but there's still another major romance left to be resolved. C'mon, you can't leave them hanging that way forever.

4. Agent Double D3, whose advice is crucial to helping us keep those special relationships with the werewolves, vampires, zombies, ghosts and mummies as, um, special as they need to be.

5. You don't have to give much. This really is a case of little things add up.

6. The new cover for Poseidon VII, the second in SJ's erotic futuristic series about the sexy and romantic agents of PIACT, deserves some cover love.

7. The bath scene in Poseidon VII deserves... well, let's say you'll enjoy it--and the elevators--a lot.

8. Free fiction--SJ shares a lot of it, both on Beyond the Veil and his web site.

9. Every dime of the money donated will go to SJ.

10. He needs to stick around to see Space Burps, his hilarious (really, I've beta read it) science fiction comedy get published and make the USA Today bestseller list.

11. Cyberius III, the award-winning first installment of the PIACT undercover space agents series.

12. All the wonderful novels he hasn't finished yet.

13. Because if we don't help each other, who will help us?

###

Ideas: Concepts and Generation

(or:- What would happen if the buttered toast landed edgewise down?)


Welcome to the literary crucible.

Today we consider one of the most basic elements of fiction writing—The Idea. The other basic elements being, The Plot, and The Writing.


First off let’s start with two definitions of Idea

Idea:- Conception, plan of thing to be aimed at, discovered.
Oxford English Dictionary

Idea:- That concept which, after indeterminable hours; gallons of coffee and
sleepless; sore-eyed; computer staring nights; still evades the probing
mind of the frustrated author.
Author unknown

The frustration of an elusive idea is intense. The need to create and produce a specific piece of work is tantamount to an author’s psyche. Plus it has been known in certain circumstances to provide the check to pay the bills. It is at these moments that the true nature of an author is refined, the literary crucible that will either forge a true all weather author or break the writer down into a motionless, staring mass of idealess jelly.

So how, as authors, can we keep up an almost endless supply of ideas to feed into our clicking keyboards. There are as many answers to this as there are authors on full time pay roll at Greasy Joe’s Sludge Bucket Café, and no one way is particularly right. As part of the nice, helpful guy that I am I’ve gathered together and expounded below a system that I developed over roughly forty years of writing. This system is guaranteed to, with a dose of tremendous luck (and an even healthier dose of stealing other people’s ideas,) to generate your own ideas for any given fictional situation.

Of course what it doesn’t guarantee is getting the ideas in time for that elusive contract…

I’ve concentrated my examples here for fantasy work, fantasy being my main love and my fascination. But the system is transmutable and can be adapted for practically any form of writing you choose. Even Non-Fiction—the system was used in the production of this article itself.

Also, although I tend to discuss the issue in terms of a new idea for a fresh story, the system can be equally applied to sections in the middle, and or end of novels and other long pieces.

I hope you find this process as useful, and as enjoyable, as I have over the years. And use of the system is entirely free provided you deposit in my bank roughly a million dollars per hour usage…


Spend some time in the mad cafe

Regardless of who you are the creative human brain works best when alert but relaxed. Music often helps as some people find it tunes in the creative nature of the brain, though this is indeed a personal thing. It is possible to find many authors who will listen to music as they write for just this reason.

A similar kind of tuning needs to be done for finding and creating ideas. It is very important to find somewhere where you feel relaxed. I've always found that being uptight and fighting through piles of words and papers and forcing myself to find an idea for a particular piece is the most counter-productive thing I can do. By focusing on the fact that I can't find an idea, the solution appears to rapidly become more and more distant.

Where to relax is a personal thing. An armchair in a small room is common, maybe in bed if you can resist the urge to watch TV or sleep. My personal favorite is to go to a local cafe or bar and amidst the bustle of people find a small corner table and sit. Armed with a hot brew or pint of beer, and a cheese Danish I sit and face the throngs. With a pad and paper ready I just let the atmosphere of the others around me draw out the tensions and open my mind to any incoming thoughts.

There are writers I know, who will sit with friends and chat freely about their ideas and plots. This kind of chatter can help tremendously but do take a pad and write the ideas down frequently. Otherwise the majority of the stuff spoken about will be forgotten by the time you've left the bar, kitchen or whatever. Be judicious though, one friend of mine was animatedly discussing various ways to kill off the husband in her companion’s novel whilst treating themselves to a pizza at the local restaurant. Half way through the exercise where they'd been through the list of poisons and found them boring, tried arranging an accident and found it too risky and were working on murdering him in his sleep when an elderly lady from a nearby table stood up and began speaking very loudly and angrily.

"You cold hearted bi...."

The object lesson is, if you will discuss techniques of murder in public it pays to either let your eavesdroppers know it is fictional now and then, or keep a loaded gun in a clearly visible place.

Wherever it is or whatever you do the universal factor seems to be the need to break away from the computer/typewriter and to let your mind clear from the physical act of writing. This spring clean of the mind allows new ideas to form where the old cobwebs used to grow.

To see or not to see

This may have given you the impression that I'm advocating you do nothing to generate ideas. This is not true. I do believe though that ideas are all around us and what we need to do is to train ourselves to see them. Terry Pratchett, famous for his Discworld, was sitting in the airport lounge one day and saw what many of us would see. A tired and haggard tourist pulling one of those suitcases on wheels. This suitcase, like so many, kept going off in the wrong direction as if it had a life of its own.

On the strength of that observation the inimitable Luggage was born. That living travel chest known to eat wizards for breakfast…

So ideas surround us and we need to observe more. How many potential story ideas have we passed today but failed to see because we haven't actually looked to see if they were there.

For one poignant fantasy I remember driving the coast road close to my home. I drove this particular road every day to work and generally thought nothing of it. Yet on this unusual day they'd been an accident and I was forced with all the other drivers to slow the car to a walking pace. It was one of those particularly dreary cloud covered days which gave the sea a kind of grey hue. It occurred to me then that the sea looked lonely. Developing that idea led to my short story The Lonely Sea.

I am embarrassed to admit it took five years and an accident to make me observe, for the first time, the sea in that condition and to recognize that it had an emotion that could be used in a fiction tale. (The Lonely Sea was published years ago in a small press publication in England that I am now far too old to remember the name of.)

The thing is, we see so many things each day that are fuel for a writer’s imagination. And that is why taking a notebook with you and making copious notes is a godsend. Looking at my notes today, I saw the young couple having a tiff in the town mall with girl leaving rapidly, the young man following. There was a lost children's balloon scooting along in the wind under the eaves of town buildings. The strange, dragon shaped incense burner in a local store and the almost worshipful way that customers admired it.

Each of these have potentials for story ideas embedded in them. For example. The young man could chase his lover to apologize and they find themselves stepping through a portal to different parts of another world where they struggle to become reunited. The balloon is blown into the presence of evil and glares on the people below. The incense burner when wielded by the hand of the “faithful” becomes a creature of power and beauty, but little trust.
These germs of ideas would easily become short stories and possibly even novels.

Meet the media men

The media men can be the fantasy writer's greatest friends. Nine times out of ten if you are stuck for an idea for a fantasy story you need turn no further than your daily newspapers, news report or magazine.

Although any newspaper will do I tend to go for the ones which are less up-market. Tabloids would be wonderful if they didn’t appear to be mainly fiction from the get go. The newspapers I love are the ones which contain little paragraphs with snippets of information. These I regularly cut and stick into a scrapbook. Short pieces like:

'Police were baffled today when the missing housewife, XXXXX, was found drowned in her car on a bend off the A45, she had apparently driven through a hedge and trees into the river beyond. The reason that the search took so long [three days] to find the body was that the car had apparently passed through the hedges and trees without harming or breaking even a twig.'
—Now this is definitely fantasy stuff.


Then there's the not quite so obvious news item:

'Police today were praising the bravery of a young stranger who prevented the abduction of a child from the local play park. The assailant, described as in his late thirties, wearing a blue duffel coat and dark green trousers was scared off when the young man accosted him and refused to let him put the child in his car. Police are anxious to find the reluctant hero who disappeared soon after the assailant had driven off in a white....' Bingo! Ideas come tumbling down. Where did the young man come from? Where did he go? Why on earth did he confront the man who could have been the child's father?

I always look closely at everything, even the adverts can spark the odd crazy idea. Take this advert for example (the first one I found in a woman's magazine):

Advanced skincare with the Johnson's Touch.
Thanks to Johnson's you can now boost your skin's natural renewal
with new pH5.5 Healthy difference Cream.....

Advanced skincare? Skin renewal? Possibly a good starting place for a fantasy story and or science fiction. Perhaps even envisage a scifi/fantasy where the space ship is a huge intergalactic creature and a young energetic wizard-scientist discovers a cream which seals, heals and renews the flesh of the huge creatures. An aid to keep them alive in battles and sustain them in adverse space conditions.

Well, it's just a thought....


The question's not in how to try but more in who, how, what and why?

Seeing things and making notes isn't the end of the exercise. I can collect and collate observations until they fill books and books fill boxes. Which they do until I throw them all out, then start again. That doesn't make them a fully fledged idea though. Once the basics have been collected they have to go through a kind of inquisition which will make them burgeon into an idea.

So what if you have a cream that will renew flesh, a balloon which reflects the image of some evil entity it temporarily meets. The next process which these observations undergo will mould them into a basic fantasy plot. The technique is very simple and one that any parent of young children will tell you they recognize with frustrating clarity. I simply ask myself the W questions. (Note How is a W question, it just happens to be written backwards!)

Take the balloon. How does that become a true story?

I’ve already undergone a few questions and answers to get to the image idea any way. So add a few more to flesh out the story idea. Straight forward questions like. What could make the balloon special to be noticed? Would it be the balloon or something else? Would it be something in the building it was clinging to? What could be in that building? Where did it come from? How does it live, feed, contact with humans? This obsrvation became the basis on my wip Red Dragon, Blue. It is a horror tale where a father sacrifices everything in order to summon five revengeful spirits to destroy those who have murdered his daughter.

And this wasn’t the only tale I could fabricate from one observation. As I sat with my handy lil’ notebook and asked myself all of these things. I wrote down all the following answers to my constant interrogation. (Always remember to work within your created, or real world, limitations as you do this)

The balloon is a child's toy. The 'spirit of evil' was attracted to the balloon because it was a child. The spirit is evil because it is in torment. It is in torment because the child it was, was beaten and tortured to death. It feeds off the fear and souls of the living. It seeks revenge. When the story ends it will be avenged. It uses what tools it is familiar with (e.g.. balloons and toys) to create fear and death (balloon taking horrific face. Skateboard placed at top of stairs for someone to step on and kill themselves.) The house it inhabits is a block of apartments and everyone within it lives in a kind of fear without knowing why. No one can move out because they trapped by something indefinable. The child spirit must be appeased and 'destroyed/removed' from this plane of existence. Use the 'Love conquers all' ploy. Who would love the child spirit. A child. How would that child meet him. Originally in his/her dreams....

I won't go any further as I hope this gives a full enough description of how the questioning process works. In fact it is essential to know when to stop the questioning. For a short story it is unnecessary to go into the detail that would be required for a novel. For something the length of this article I used about two 8” by 4” sides of sparsely handwritten notes taken from this process.

I find also that the questioning process helps to weed out story inconsistencies. For example, assume I'm writing a story where the unsung hero suddenly rises from herding his father's pigs to kingship and glorious victory as a famous warrior. The questions would remind me that a pig farmer wouldn't know how to use a sword. In fact all he would know is pig farming. The questions then teach me how to create a character from him that influences those he needs around him, and together they achieve the goals which the plot has set for him.

See the stranger with the glazed stare

This is the process I generally follow:

1. Allow steam from coffee cup to fog up my glasses.
2. Allow sighing waitress to remove yet another untouched coffee mug
3. Wonder if my butt’s been glued to the seat.
4. Is my pen frozen immovably to my hand?
5. Allow thoughts, observations and ideas to mix and meld.
6. Write them down!

Maybe it's a personal thing, perhaps observation/question method is one that only I can use. If that was the case I wonder what would have happened that day in the airport lounge if Terry Pratchett had said,

“Oh, another one of those hard to control suitcases...."

I believe it is the nature of an author to learn to ask questions. In the belief that eventually we’ll ask the right one which will produce that gem of an idea.

Whether you have trouble generating ideas or not, I hope that in the long, dark idea-blanked night of your soul this small monologue has been of some assistance to help speed you on your way.



S.J.'s Third novel Dante I, third in the PIACT undercover agent series will be out sometime in the summer.

Now isn't that exciting news! More details later.

S.J.