Recent content by The Dark One

After so many rejections we learn to scan across any opening praise looking for the BUT. Imagine my surprise about a year ago when I got an email from one of my country's bigger agents which started with quite high praise. I had to read it three times before I fully realised that there was no...

Good god... after a measly 31 rejections? I had at least 500 rejections across my first three novels until the fourth one was accepted - some 15 years after I started writing seriously. Writing is is extremely difficult and unbelievably competitive. That's why I always encourage people to do...

Would-be writers ask me all the time for advice and pretty much all of them are disappointed when I give it. This is more or less my usual advice... Don't become a writer if you are seeking fame or fortune. Almost certainly you will fail. The only reason to become a writer is because you love...

Hard to fight a crocodile, even for the hardiest of fighting men. If I had to identify a common(ish) theme to my work it would probably be my fascination with The Secret World - the life that happens between the cracks - the extraordinary within the ordinary. My work always includes unusual...

The bearing of finch is a difficult matter It isn't just one of your holiday memes You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you each finch must bear three different themes

There's one for US$172 on Abe Books. I had no idea it was so valuable. I had a copy many years ago but lost it, so bought another direct from the publisher (in Scotland) when they were still in print. That must have been 20 years ago. So glad I did.

Out of print for years. I have a copy but I won't let it out of my sight. Where have you been Finchy?

I've probably said this on here before, but if I had to nominate just one book as the most perfectly written novel I've ever read, it would be The Stone Cage by Nicholas Stuart Gray. It's a retelling of the story of Rapunzel through the eyes of the witch's cat. Just wonderful. Here's my GR review.

I couldn't begin to say... at least accurately. I've read obsessively forever, both fiction and non-fiction, not to mention professional works (I'm a lawyer in real life). In my teenage years it was nothing for me to read a book a day and even now I've always got two or three books on the go...

In the past.

Whatever happened to Finchbearer? Quite liked her.

Thank god. I've been raising suspicions about this for at least a year and finally some action. I have to say I'd lost a bit of interest in the forum because of the obvious bots fishing for content. Hopefully the community can be restored.

Redemption is easier and more believable (for an arch villain) if you hint at unwillingness or mitigating reasons for the evil all along - and then the reader discovers them as a kind of twist. Aaah! He didn't mean to do all that bad stuff it's because of X, Y, Z etc In fact he's a kind of...

Without having read through the whole thread, I'm going to offer a somewhat different perspective... As a straight, white male it is difficult for me to get into the heads of other cultures/subcultures unless by observation and imagination. That's what we do as authors all the time, it's just...

Your English is far better than my German, aber wenn man mehr langsam spricht kann ich besser verstehen. Don't be intimidated by genius, be inspired. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius.