Eren Cover Reveal and Giveaway

I am so excited to be able to share this with you all - Eren has a cover! It's a very odd feeling seeing my name on there, but I couldn't be happier with the design C&R have come up with. Eren's been in my head for so long now that the idea of it being an actual book is very strange - but it's going to be, and it's going to be beautiful. Ellie, the illustrator, and Jessie, the art director, have found the perfect look - dark, raw, but so intriguing. As I'm sure you can tell, I love it. Just wait till you see what else they've come up with...

Let's have no more delays. Guys, I give you ... Eren.

Nice, right? I mean ... wow.

To celebrate the cover release, I'm running a two week giveaway to win a copy of Indigo Ink Press' Modern Grimmoire: Contemporary Fairy Tales, Fables & Folklore. It's another stunning book, and you can read all about it on the publishers' website here. Like fairy tales? Like modern retellings of them? Want to read one of mine - a modern Pied Piper with a man who eats glass and uses stories instead of music? Well, you can - just enter the giveaway below.

You can also add Eren to your Goodreads pile by clicking here. Enjoy!

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Putting Flesh on the Bones - The Writing Process Blog Tour

How do writers actually write? It's the classic question - the question - that authors and thinkers and everything in between has tried to answer since the first 'once upon a time...'

Everyone has their own habits and systems, and we're probably a product of the books we read just as much as the books we want to write. Hearing how other people write - how they get the damn letters to behave themselves, and the words to stop being so silly - can tell you a lot about that person.



It's probably a bad thing that I'm about to write about my own process, then. Actually, I've been tagged in The Writing Process Blog Tour (Ooooh). How did this happen? You have Kat Ellis to blame for that. Kat and I have the same agent, and though we've never met, Twitter and blogging and generally sharing the journey to publication has given me a somewhat 'comrade-in-arms' mentality about Kat. She's also a nifty writer. Her debut, Blackfin Sky, has sold in the UK and the US, and will be coming out in May and September, respectively. You can read her piece for this tour, Plot Holes and Plug Holes, over on her blog. It is very good.



After my answers, I'm gonna pass on the baton to some more awesome new writers. I hope you stick around and see what they have to say next week. Enjoy!

What am I working on?

My debut, Eren, is coming out in September, and though it feels odd to say it, it's now completely done. It's been strange turning to other projects, but I'm now deep into my second book (as yet untitled, because titles are stupid and hard and who even needs them anyway?). I tend to always be writing a few short stories - it keeps you fresh, I think, and different formats help challenge you as a writer.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

My genre is middle grade fantasy (or middle grade magical realism, if you think that's a real thing), so the books that are big successes tend to be generally upbeat, in the end. I think my work is darker, even though it's for children. I remember as a kid wanting to see movies and read books where you didn't know that somehow the good side was going to win. Why didn't the bad guys ever end up on top? And so, Eren began...

Why do I write what I do?

David Almond's Skellig has been a huge inspiration to me. You don't have to look at Eren very hard to see that even as a child, my thinking about the world was changed by Almond's prose. Why do I write what I do? Because it's fun, and because it was my story to tell, but also because I was inspired by the right book at the right time.

How does my writing process work?

I called this post 'Flesh on the Bones' for a reason. When I write, I always put together a skeleton story first, connecting the major points, getting things generally the right way up, but without the finese or sensible storytelling that makes books work. A novel that's due to be 40,000 words will only be 30,000 in a first draft, because I know that the second time through, I will pad it out - or, put flesh (better writing, new characters, snappy dialogue) on the bones (rushed passages, silly wordings, and downright mistakes).

Practically, writing for me means getting into a zone, and shooting off a couple of thousand words at a time. My wife has complained before that I might as well not be there when I write - a day can pass and I don't focus on much else. Once this is done, though, I have to let the pages sit and breathe. Only time can give you distance, and perspective is the best magnifying glass, to show you the problems with your drafts. So, I splurge, and then I don't read it again for a couple of weeks. Letting writing 'cool' is, for me, the most important and most frustrating part. I know in my head that I need to do it - but the temptation's always there to rush it, and by doing so, to ruin in.

***

It's time to step aside and let some other authors take the stage. I'm tagging two fantastic writers for the next stage of the tour. Be sure to keep a lookout for their posts next week!




Chloe Banks lives in a quiet corner of England with her husband, baby son and a childish sense of excitement. Armed with nothing but a science degree she set out to teach herself how to write in 2009. She has had a handful of short story successes and her first novel The Art of Letting Go is shortly to be published by Thistle Publishing. When not trying to get words to behave, she spends her days tramping the hills, baking pudding and aggressively avoiding celery. You can find her at chloebanks.co.uk or on twitter @ChloeTellsTales.





Kate Jarvik Birch is a visual artist and writer living in Salt Lake City,
Utah with her husband and three kids.
She wrote her first novel in fourth grade (the main character was suspiciously similar to herself and the love interest bore quite a strong resemblance to the boy she had a crush on). As an adult, her essays and short stories have been published in Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, Saint Ann’s Review, Scissors and Spackle and Indiana Review. Kate’s art has been sold in stores like Pier 1, Target and World Market and has been used in feature films like 21 Jump Street and Looper as well as TV shows like Glee and Medium. See Kate's website at http://katejarvikbirch.blogspot.com/ and find her on Twitter as @katejarvikbirch

On Being Busy and Creating

While I like to think of myself as a generally creative guy (my GCSE in Pottery is probably one of my proudest and, looking back, most baffling achievements) the last few weeks have been  some of the most busiest creative weeks of my life. Timelines and deadlines have congregated, as only timelines and deadlines can, so that I suddenly have a lot of Things To Do. This isn't a complaint, mind - these are things I've chosen to do, because I want to, and I hope they'll make me (and the world) a bit happier.

Still, it's got me thinking a lot more about being busy and how it affects creative thinking.

(I'd also recommend this video by TimH about creativity and time. Look out for what he says about creating things when you have the least free time of all - it is good.)

So, being busy. It's a pretty subjective thing. One person's manic business is another person's regular job, and they way we deal with our time depends, in the end, on who we are. It might be tempting to look at someone else and decide they have much more time than you - but what does that matter? You're responsible for your own time, in the end.

 Remember the words of Gandalf, kids - "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Artwork by Nidoart

The many things I'm doing right now - some related to Eren and its publication, others related to new books, and others not related to my writing at all, but still things that need to be done - are taking up evenings and weekends, mornings and afternoons, time I should be working, time I should be sleeping ... and to top it all, there's weddings coming up, and vacation, and I'm going to be in Scotland for two weeks... 

It's brilliant.

Maybe just like an oil tanker takes a long time to get going, but then a long time to slow down, creativity has momentum. Could that be how it works? That if you're making things and doing things, you're more likely to make other things, do other things, and spur yourself on even more? Turns out, I think it is. Creativity breeds creativity, and being busy can wake you up, get you going, and (for me) force you to keep on top of your time, in a way few other things can. 

The things I'm doing that are keeping me busy, but through that they're helping me do more things. I know the cycle will break, eventually - a big project will come to and end and the house of cards will crumble - but right now, with all the balls in the air, I'm buzzing.

Now, I know it's possible to burn out. The flip side of creativity is probably apathy. I'm not wary of that, though I do know it exists.

I just hope at the moment that the outcome of my work will be good - and, when I look back, it will have been worth it. 

Review: The Dyerville Tales by M. P. Kozlowsky

It's been a while since I've reviewed a book here, and even then it was mostly older, established stories as part of my Wednesday's Inspiring Books series. But when something deserves to be shared, it deserves to be shared, and I've just finished a book that definitely warrants some praise.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of M. P. Kozlowsky's THE DYERVILLE TALES a couple of weeks ago. It sounded like an intriguing book and, what with its publication coming up (April 22, to be exact) I bumped it to the top of my admittedly large To Read pile.

I'm glad I did. It's a pretty special book.

(Thanks to Jordan Brown, by the way, the book's editor, for hookiug me up with a copy)

So, THE DYERVILLE TALES...

First - the blurb:

Vince Elgin is an orphan, having lost his mother and his father in a fire when he was young, but beyond that, his life hasn't been much of a fairy tale. With only a senile grandfather he barely knows to call family, Vince was remanded to a group home, where he spun fantastical stories, dreaming of the possibility that his father, whose body was never found, might one day return for him. But it's been a long time since the fire, a long time since Vince has told himself a story worth believing in.

That's when a letter arrives, telling Vince his grandfather has passed away. Vince cannot explain it, but he's convinced that if his father is somehow still alive, he'll find him at the funeral. He strikes out for his grandfather's small hometown of Dyerville carrying only one thing with him: his grandfather's journal. The journal tells a story that could not possibly be true, a story of his grandfather's young life involving witches, giants, magical books, and evil spirits. But as Vince reads on and gets closer to Dyerville, fact and fiction begin to intertwine, and Vince finds that his very real adventure may have more in common with his grandfather's than he ever could have known.

M. P. Kozlowsky, the author of Juniper Berry, has crafted a powerfully imaginative novel of the spaces in life where fantasy and reality intersect, a touching story of the things we give up to recover the things we've lost.

It's a lot to live up to, but Kozlowsky's a beautiful, thoughtful writer, and he seems up to the task. THE DYERVILLE TALES works by following Vince (that's young Vince) as he travels to find the truth about his family, stopping along the way to read the stories from his grandfather's book. Real-life adventure (with all the dangers and heartbreak that comes with it) are matched by Vince's suspicion that the stories have more to them than meets the eye. It's a clever, gripping way of telling one complete story - towards the end I was racing through the pages, eager - but still guessing - to see what would happen, in both worlds, and in the special place where they meet.

This story's real strength, though, is in its willingness to embrace the darkness at the heart of the adventure. There are some honestly terrifying characters, and some scenes that might even shock adult readers. That's a good thing - adventures aren't all sleeping under the stars and the simple matter of a week's walk; they're hunger and thirst and cold, and being trapped for months and months against your will in a cave. Vince has to learn this before he can find any sort of peace, and Kozlowsky's not afraid to tackle the problems that come from being a child all alone in the world. His witches are evil and his monsters and monstrous.

The ending - which I'm not going to spoil, of course - might confuse some people, but I can't think of a better way to leave these stories. The DYERVILLE TALES is a book of friendship, magic, love, danger, loss, darkness, and - in the end - hope and belief in one person's ability to take control of their life. It's an old fashioned fairy tale that's had its clockwork dusted and a few modern tricks thrown in. Will it be everyone's cup of tea? Perhaps not - the language is complicated at times and some of the nuances might annoy readers who want to know for sure what things mean. Ultimately, though, reading THE DYERVILLE TALES has made me want to read Kozlowsky's other novel, JUNIPER BERRY - and I can't think of higher praise than that.

Add THE DYERVILLE TALES on Goodreads

Follow M. P. Kozlowsky on Twitter

Three Years Later (And All That Jazz) - Why Writers Should Dare To Dream

Life's funny, sometimes. Time, doubly so. Three years seems like such a long time, but then you think back to where you were and you can't believe it seems so fresh and new. Then you think about all that's happened in those years and your brain starts to make small popping noises because those two things don't seem like they can both be true.

Three years ago today (March 11) was the Tohoku earthquake, subsequent tsunami, and sub-subsequent (if that's how it works) Fukushima nuclear meltdown(s). I was there at the time (Japan, I mean - not Fukushima) and helped in what small ways I could, and patched up my roof as best I could, and tried to get on. I moved to the U.S. later that year and got married, and I'm still here, three years later.

Pretty sure that's how you fix a roof. Almost certainly. Maybe.

The Japan Times has some striking photos of Tohoku three years after it was hit - see here.

Three years. Really? Gosh. It's a good amount of time to measure my life in, I think. Enough time to get into trouble but not enough time to get too comfortable.It's strange to look back at my life then and think - huh, he didn't know that Eren would work out. It was just a story he was writing - a dream, I guess - when he had time in-between teaching and exploring Japan and trying to plan a wedding in a country he barely knew. But, Eren was important enough that quite a lot of nights were spent typing away and trying to ignore the fact the ground was shaking (not because of earthquakes, mind - my house was right next to the bullet train tracks, and old, and made of wood, and tended to wobble a bit).

The time poured into Eren back then is what makes Eren possible now. My publisher sent over illustration proofs yesterday (illustrations! Of Eren! Wah!), and we're talking about covers, and release dates, and they're using words like 'marketing' and it's all very real. I couldn't have known this was all coming but I wrote the words anyway, and I'm thankful I had the time and the opportunity.

If you're a writer and all you have is a dream, then don't lose sight of how amazing that is - because you're a writer and you have a dream. That's magic. Hold onto it and if things seem like a waste of time, if it feels like you're fooling yourself that your book could ever make it, remember that every other writer felt that way, feels that way, and will feel that way.

We can be a dour bunch at times.

Japan will always be a huge part of who I am and I have every intention of returning when I can. For now, I send them thoughts from afar and will probably eat sushi today, because that sounds like a good thing to do.

In other news:

I joined the Fearless Fifteeners! Yes, I know, Eren comes out in '14, so I'm not really a Fifteener (I'm not really fearless either, let's be honest) but it's a group for debut writers, and it's filled with rather snazzy folk. Go check them out and read all about the wonderful new worlds people are making. You can see my little bit here and even learn what I'm afraid of (Hint: It tends to be wet).

More Eren news to come, soon - I promise.