Grahame the Ghost

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 29 - Do you know what you wanted to be at 11?

At 11 I wanted to work in a zoo. I even wrote a letter to the director of Edinburgh Zoo about my ambition, and they wrote me a nice hand-written letter back, telling me the subjects I would have to study to get a job there. 🙂

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 26 - Describe how it feels to be "locked in" to your work.

There's a point that I'll always describe as "the book beginning to write itself". That's the moment that I'm most locked in.

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 27 - Tell a story, real or fictional, about an object on your desk.

Whenever I start a new project (and this is long before novel writing days), I always buy a small notebook and keep it beside me on my desk for any random notes or research points I want to have at hand.

When the project is completed, then the notebook also goes, to be replaced by its successor. I'm fickle that way. 🙂

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 29 - Share some of the last things you looked up for what you’re working on now.

Not what I'm working on now, but will be working on next. I start researching the next book while still working on the current one.

It's going to be located in The Great Basin Desert, (the Nevada bit). So I've been reading up about it, and the tribes who lived there a few hundred years ago. Very interesting. 🙂

#ScribesAndMakers Aug 25 - Do you have any self-imposed rules for your creative work?

I keep to a schedule, because I don't want to keep the customer waiting and I like to deliver my projects to deadline, but that's more time management than a rule.

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 24 - Talk about a time you realised something about a writer through their works.

I don't know if I ever do, I just remain blissfully ignorant until I hear about it in the news. 🙂

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 28 - How do we defend ourselves as artists when the arts are devalued?

I just spent the last two days writing about a very famous 19th century artist who had to resort to painting miniatures of his best know work to make enough money to live on.

Another favourite story is Gary Numan being boycotted by the Musician's Union for two years because he used ...a synthesiser???

Formats change, technology has levelled the playng field for many and allowed us all to publish. The publishing gatekeepers of a few years ago would have kept most of the riff-raff out (well me anyway). 🙂

The first people to get upset by the march of progress in the recording industry were the piano-roll makers who saw their business devalued by the gramophone record.

Keep doing what you do and trust that even if it's not millions of people, someone will find value in your art.

#WordWeavers Aug 29 - What writing accomplishment are you quietly proud of?

I suppose I'm quietly proud of making a late career change into ghostwriting and somehow managing to keep the work going. 🙂

#WordWeavers Aug 26 - What weather best matches your current work in progress?

Extremes. It begins in drought, but rain and flood is on the way.

#WordWeavers Aug 25 - If readers could keep one item from your story as a souvenir, what would it be?

I'm writing about ancient relics again, but there always seems to be some kind of price to pay for having one in the house.

So I wouldn't recommend it. There is some nice Belgian chocolates if that's any good. 🙂

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 27 - Does 'humanity' as a concept figure often in your works? How so?

I write about it in the sense that it's the contrast to the inhumanity that many of my characters suffer under.

Conquesting armies are never benevolent. Through history (and up to the present day) the most horrific war crimes have been carried out to subjugate defeated populations.

Yet something in the positive aspects of human nature manages to persist through resistance. I write a lot about that.

#WordWeavers Aug 27 - Which character would win a trivia contest?

I can't really call this one. The current WIP features a stellar cast of people famous for their contributions to science, so that category would be keenly contested.

They might not be so good on Film and TV as it hadn't been invented. 🙂

#WordWeavers Aug 24 - Which chapter or scene took the longest to get right?

The final battle in TBOTB1. Who lives, who dies, and who gets chased off by midges while not wearing any clothes.

Three rewrites before I got the right combination. 🙂

#WordWeavers Aug 30 - If you could interview one of your characters over coffee, what would be the first question you asked?

I would always start with a "take me back to the beginning" question, which in this case would be...

"What first attracted you to becoming a professional tracker. Was it the thrill of pursuing those evading justice, or just the life benefits of the hi-tech augmentation to enhance your senses?"

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 25 - Can a story be told from the point of view of something unconscious?

I hate to draw everyone's attehtion to it again, but Dallas Season 9? The "It was all a dream" season.

#ScribesAndMakers May 26 - Who's your favourite vampire?

Only a half-vampire, but I'll choose the dhampir, Blade.

#ScribesAndMakers May 25 - Stella had been dreading this moment...

"Whoever persuaded me to do this? Four steel clips and a man I never met before today are the only things between me and certain death.

Thirty years in television, playing everyone's daughter, a BAFTA for my film work, and an Olivier Award for my Peggy and Maria in Hamilton. Many didn't realise I played both parts.

But the phone stopped ringing, the auditions began to pass me by, and the best that my overpaid agent could come up with? ...Jumping out of a helicopter, followed by several weeks of being bitten by ants and eating godknowswhat from an ostrich or a camel.

Still, the cameras are rolling. I'm a professional to the end. I cast one look back at the 1st assistant director as my legs dangle over the fast moving jungle below.

I can get out of here. I just need to say the words.

'Action!' he calls."

#WordWeavers May 25 - What one event defines your MC?

I'm picking something to answer the question, but like others today, I don't think it can really be reduced to one event.

But I'll go for the moment that Artos finds out who his real parents were. It's a revelation that answers more about his life than he could ever have imagined.

#WritersCoffeeClub May 25 - Share a late-stage change you made to a work.

As a lot of my books feature battles or war, then life and death decisions about who makes it to the sequel are often made during the writing of the last couple of chapters.