It occurred to me during the course of this week, just how important it is for the reader to find the pages of a novel turning by themselves, with a minimum of effort required to maintain engagement with the plot.
As I make my way through the final amendments of the last chapter, agonising over words and sentence structure, looking to gain the right balance between information and immediacy, I am struck by the power of changing just one word.
Yesterday the porcess made me reach for my favourite novel, my inspiration: Dandelion Wine. Just look at the poetry in Ray Bradbury’s prose and you realise what a mountainous task it is to get the feel of a book just right.
Hopefully, by the time the paperback of A Shadow Falls becomes available, the words will flow swan like across the page, with no indication of the hours of labour that have gone in to ‘getting it right.’ I’m no Ray Bradbury, but I’d like to say that at long last I am happy with the tone and feel of the novel.
This is my way again of saying, please be patient – we’re nearly there and its going to be worth the wait!
I’m also excited to report that Tom Roden-Farmer’s early drafts of the map look bang on the money. It’s great to see Rhoderica coming to life through the eyes and interpretation of another.
Up the Elves!
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on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Song of the Elves.
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About The Author
Writing has been my main form of escape since a child. Before teaching, I earned a living on a little known national newspaper, before discovering I also had a calling for the classroom.
The first embryonic scribbles for Song of the Elves emerged in 2000. I began writing the first trilogy as one continuous manuscript entitled The Summerlands, which I finally completed in the Winter of 2007. In the intervening years, I've been transforming this first draft into three distinct instalments of the saga. "A Shadow Falls" and "The King's Blades" have already seen the light of day. "Sins of the Father" will follow shortly. There will be a second trilogy to complete the saga, which I intend to commence work on in 2012. Book four is entitled "The Lost, The Lonely and the Damned".
I have also written a series of short tales entitled The Wolves of Winter, set in Rhoderica before the elves invaded the continent. This is now available through lulu.com as a paperback and via amazon kindle as an e-book.. My second, 'Tale of Rhoderica' will be a fantasy version of the great John Ford western - The Searchers. Entitled, To the Ends of the Earth', the novel will be out for Spring 2016. I am also half-way through a manuscript for a science fiction novel, entitled The Mirror of His Soul. Time and health permitting, these will all eventually see the light of day.
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