mastodon 4.7.3I’m writing an ongoing series of urban fantasy novels which I’m tentatively referring to as the Wheel of the Year Sequence. Set in contemporary times and, in a similar vein to series such as The Dresden Files, The Rivers of London, and A Discovery of Witches, depicting a world where magic and the supernatural are real but hidden away from the majority of the population. Largely set in the UK, much of the narrative is centred on London.
#ScribesAndMakers 4/28. Are you interested in etymology? Is there a word with an origin you find especially interesting?
Indeed I am, you could go as far as saying I wrote a book on the subject.
My writing career began with me writing articles for aquarium magazines, during which time I wrote more than 200 pieces discussing various aspects of reef aquarium maintenance. I was widely published and, at one time or another , have written for virtually every major English-speaking aquarium magazine in the UK and the US plus had articles published in France, Italy, and Germany.
On retirement I wrote AQUATICAL•LATIN a non-fiction book which examined the etymology (the meaning) of the scientific names of around 950 species of the most common tropical marine fishes in the aquarium hobby. This involved me having to teach myself both Latin and Greek in order to translate these names as most of them are based on these two languages. You can find this title at: https://linkly.link/2ZykB UK and https://linkly.link/2ZylE US. It received a non-solicited 5 star review on Amazon. I’ve been known to laughingly refer to it as the book which established a new category of non-fiction books, unpopular science. This was around about nine years ago, since then I’ve been trying my hand at fiction.
To this day, whenever I come across an unfamiliar word, I feel compelled to look it up, so I know what it means along with finding out its derivation.
Ah, the perils of being an author:
It was on this day in 1667 that the blind and impoverished John Milton sold Paradise Lost to a printer for the princely sum of ten pounds, so it could be entered into the Stationers' Register, a record book which constituted an early form of copyright law.
It doesn’t sound like much, especially when you consider how, at the time, it consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. Curiously, the number ten seems to be something of a recurring motif in this little story
In today’s money those ten pounds are equivalent to around about twenty one and a half thousand pounds. So, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad payday after all.
#ScribesAndMakers 24/4: Our next featured creator has a "love/hate affair with common tropes." What's your relationship with tropes?
I enjoy playing with tropes and like to subvert them at every opportunity.
In the world of my urban fantasy if a magic user starts bleeding it’s more likely to be because they’ve been hit in the face rather than a psychic nosebleed.
Similarly, there’s no conflict between magic and technology, so witches are more than likely to store their personal Book of Shadows on a technological device.
#WordWeavers 24 Apr Do your characters have any “tells” when they are lying?
My protagonist, Nathan, is a consummate liar, a master of deception, and has a whole string of pseudonyms he uses for when he’s misdirecting some hapless figure.
Usually it's an antique dealer he’s in the process of swindling as he searches out magically imbued objects known as artefacts.
#ScribesAndMakers 27th Apr 2026. Reticent? No, taciturn.
Which of your books was most challenging to write? I think this was a question addressed to @JessMahler by Walter Thinman but I thought I’d have a go at answering it, too.
For me, I think I’d have to conclude writing How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List was the most challenging.
Normally I write a novel of around about 100,000 words over the course of 6 months. Attempting to write a complete 50,000 word story over the course of 30 days was a new kind of challenge.
When I started it I didn’t have anything in the way of a plot other than knowing I was going to write something based on the Evil Overlord list. That gave me plenty of material to work with and over the course of the month I incorporated a number of contemporary news stories to help bulk it out.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the resulting story.
Finally got the second edition of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List up and published on Amazon and I’ve received an email to confirm it’s now live and available for purchase in the Kindle Store. Although when I checked it’s still showing the first edition even after I’ve unpublished it. Unpublish, what a ghastly word. I’m sure depublished would be a far more suitable term.
Now I’ve just got to go back and review the print version to make sure it’s in line with the latest update and then I can get back to writing instead of reviewing the damned things.
It’s also time I got down to searching out other comparable books covering the same subject to help promote mine to like-minded readers. My usage of the term Supervillain doesn’t mean it refers to comic book villains battling it out with costumed heroes, so the closest examples I’ve found so far seem to be the series of 3 Supervillain books billed as being by King Oblivion Ph.D. as told to Matt D. Wilson.
I’d be grateful if anyone out there in indieauthors.social-land can make any further suggestions.
Does anybody out there in indieauthors.social-land know of any UK bookshops, preferably in the Midlands, which are happy to stock novels by indie authors?
I’m thinking of compiling a list of those who are willing to help out those of us who haven’t gone down the route of traditional publishing.
#bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #onthisday #HowtoSucceed… #Author #Novel
Finally updated both the print and eBook versions of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List to the second edition on all the platforms where it’s available.
Now I can get back to the business of writing instead of faffing about trying to upload the latest edition and generally being frustrated by the process.
Technology’s great when it works the way it’s supposed to, but recent experience leads me to believe it takes great pleasure in messing with the heads of those of us who aren’t particularly tech-savvy.
The innate animosity of the inanimate object, and all that…
#bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #onthisday #HowtoSucceed… #Author #Novel
For some unknown reason it’s proved to be a bit of a struggle to get the 2nd edition of the print version of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List up on Amazon. There seemed to be a number of discrepancies between the way the book was formatted in Word and the way it showed up in Kindle preview.
No sooner had I successfully resolved the problem than I ran into a number of new discrepancies whilst sorting out the pricing. I’m trying to keep the pricing the same on both Amazon and Draft2Digital, but I keep finding minor differences in prices cropping up.
I can’t wait to get back to writing instead of being consumed by this fiddlesome business of publishing.