FALLINK IN LUFF AGAIN -- WITH THE WONDER OF EBOOKS. AND SF HERO ROB SAWYER'S JUST AS SMITTEN

There are many good reasons for reading, and one has just entered my head. If someone don’t read while a-living, someone certainly can’t when a-dead. Anonymarr (circa five minutes ago)

STAR TREK ROMEO CAPT KIRK LOVED EBOOKS TOO!

My first and last attempt at poetry, I promise ya, folks. Painful, eh? I wasn’t cut out to be a poet. Or a castrato singer, come to that.

But this nonsense rhyme (adapted from a be-whiskered English joke about drinking and that’s even older and less witty than I am) brought on more thoughts about ‘the book’ itself.

Love, the songs rapturously advise us, lasts forever and a day (divorce is not an option in love songs, it seems). But how long can words survive the death of their author: A century, a millennium, three millennium before the last copy crumbles to dust … or for infinity, complete and fresh as a daisy in a digital ebook form – millions or even billions of them as time goes on and on and on, classics of old and classics yet to be born? Even countless books of more minor or niche importance right down to an in-the-family memoir by some obscure Joe or Jane Doe in Podunk could live forever (give or take that extra day).

Julie Christie in Fahrenheit 451

And how much precious printed work was lost forever in the fires at the Great Library of Alexandria and by book-burning religions and extremist political regimes over the centuries? Never let Ray Bradbury’s magnificent Fahrenheit 451 Science Fiction warning be forgotten. A scarily close to home story in which books are illegal and mass incinerated by a brutal government with a vested interest in popular ignorance. (Not that anyone could easily forget that with the gorgeous Julie Christie in the movie version’s lead role).

There are many good reasons for e-reading, and they enter my head daily. And they enter the head of top-flight Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, who’s offered us his own good reasons for a decade-long love affair with the unprinted word … for words that will exist as long as there’s a virtual cloud adrift in our planet’s skies. And maybe an information-seeded cloud that can travel light years and into the darkest reaches of the universe as long as electricity is a part of cosmic nature. Who knows what intelligent life form billions of years and galaxies away on Planet Xzog may read one of Rob’s already far-reaching stories of the maybe and the probably-will-be?

Rob, 51, switched from non-fiction success to Science Fiction dreams thirty years ago, and with two of the field’s most coveted awards – the Nebula and the Hugo – standing as bookends to his twenty-plus published, hugely popular novels and three short story collections, his name is honoured by SF aficionados everywhere.

He’s born, bred, educated, writes full time and is married to Carolyn Clink in Canada. Currently he and Carolyn live in Mississauga, Canada’s newish but fastest growing city; one of its very greenest, and proudly boasting a multi-cultural population and passion for the arts.

Perhaps all the qualities of his adopted home town explain this eager embracing of the ebook concept when he moved in – ebooks, after all, are the fastest growing area of publishing, the greenest, the most multi-cultural and, without a doubt, a passionately artistic literary advance: The greatest giant leap since Gutenberg knocked out a flat-bed printing engine from an old wine press in his cellar 600 years ago and made the book available to the common man for the very first time.

Rob also finds time for public readings and lectures and teaches writing at university level. He judges serious writing contests, has served as writer-in-residence and as book critic; and his books are part of major university and high school literature curricula in Canada and the US. He’s made more than 150 TV appearances, hundreds of radio shows and featured in countless newspaper and magazine articles.

And somehow he still squeezes in the hours for A HELPFUL AND FASCINATING BLOG  and to informally mentor writers in development. No wonder Rob is a popular and well-loved star in the literary galaxy.

And here’s what he has to tell us about ebooks:

                                                          ***

Author Robert J. Sawyer

This week marks my tenth anniversary as a reader of ebooks. I got in early because, as a science-fiction writer, I’d long been expecting this technology. After all, Captain Kirk read reports off a wedge-shaped device back in 1966, and the astronauts in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey used tablet computers for viewing documents.

I tried lots of devices early on: Palm OS personal-digital assistants with tiny screens, early dedicated devices with monochrome LCD screens (such as the long-gone Franklin eBookman and RCA REB-1100), and later, first-generation e-ink devices (such as the iRex iLiad).
Several things immediately convinced me this was better than reading on paper.

First, even early on, most ebook systems offered built-in dictionaries. In the days of paper books, I rarely bothered to haul a dictionary off the shelf; now, whenever I encounter a word whose meaning I’m not exactly sure of, I effortlessly look it up.

Second, ebooks let you set the font size to whatever you’re comfortable with. As your eyes get older, you’ll find e-reading is much more pleasant, since every title is automatically available in a large-print edition.

Third, having an infinitely big library without it taking up any space is great — and to have that library be portable is fantastic. This year, I’ve travelled through all 24 time zones — right around the world. Having hundreds of books with me on that trek was heaven for a compulsive reader.

Fourth, searching: when I’m doing research, the ability to search in a book for the specific term I’m looking for is indispensable.

Fifth, free public-domain classics: maybe there’s an irony in using twenty-first-century technology to read nineteenth-century books, but I’m way better read today because of PROJECT GUTENBERG.

I heard Margaret Atwood pooh-poohing dedicated ebook readers a while ago, saying you can’t use them in the bathtub. Actually, Margaret, you can: just seal them in a Ziploc bag, and you’re good to go, and if you drop it, you’re fine – whereas a paper book is ruined if it gets soaked. (Yes, you can put a paper book in a baggie, too – but you can’t change the page once it’s in there; you easily can with an ebook reader.)

One constantly hears people saying they don’t like reading off computer screens and so will never read ebooks. Well, yes, it’s true that you can read off such screens – but you can also read ebooks on devices such as the Kobo Touch, Kindle 3G, Sony, and Nook and a host of others, which all have modern e-ink displays that are as easy on the eyes as printed paper. As I’ve often said, the single biggest barrier to widespread adoption of ebooks is that most people still haven’t seen a dedicated ebook reader.

I very much like e-ink devices, but I also do much of my reading on my iPhone 4 (where, in my opinion, the Kobo app runs circles around the Kindle app – and not just because Kobo recognizes that full justification looks awful on narrow screens, and so gives you the option of turning it off).

One of the biggest pluses of reading ebooks on smartphones is that you can do it in the dark. I turn the brightness way down on my iPhone, switch to the Kobo app’s night-reading mode (which gives me white letters on a black background), and read to my heart’s content.

Books are my life. And I’m proud of my Canadian heritage. But I’ve got to say that when fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan said ‘the medium is the message,’ he missed the boat on ebooks. The medium – paper book or ebook – is irrelevant. It’s the message – the content – that matters, and for me, for a full decade now, by far my favourite way to enjoy that content has been electronically. Give it a try: I bet you’ll become a convert, too.

***

And if the medium is the message, why are newspapers in their death throes and online news sources in their ascendency? Why has TV and cinema replaced the artificial setting of the traditional live theatre and music hall? Why do so few people visit classical and rock concerts compared to those content to listen to recorded works on tiny little electronic devices? And why do latest published statistics report the ever-increasing popularity of ebook reading in the face of print book reading’s decline and fall and with brick and mortar bookshops now proving about as popular as pork pie stands at a bar mitzvah?

Take a look at this par I included this week at our new Limitrophe Publishing imprint ebook website: Publishers Weekly noted on September 12, 2011: Ebook sales rose 167% in June to $80.2 million at the fifteen houses that reported figures to AAP’s monthly sales report and closed the first half of the year with sales up 161% to $383.8 million. The major trade segments took big hits in June. Trade paperback sales had the largest decline, down 64%, while children’s hardcover sales were off 31%. Adult hardcover sales fell 25%, mass market sales were down 22% and children’s paperback was off 13%. Sales in all the trade segments were also off by more than 10% for the first half of the year.

I’d highly recommend you take Rob’s sage advice and give ebooks a chance. You’ll never look back. 

And if you don’t like ’em, I’ll guarantee to immediately send you $1,000,000 or a free ebook to try again (choice of compensation at the discretion of BeWrite Books’ accountancy department).

You can find Stephen’s Website HERE 

His latest book is WWW: WONDER.

And just for fun (c'mon it's weekend -- time to sparer) here are a couple of short videos. 

In the first, ROB SHOWS OFF SOME OF THE EBOOK DEVICES HE'S USED OVER THE YEARS

In the Second, BeWrite Books' Technical and Design Director, Tony Szmuk, DEMONSTRATES JUST HOW GOOD EVEN ECCENTRIC POETRY LAYOUT LOOKS ON A TABLET DEVICE. (And accompanied by some relaxing JS Bach trumpet work to make the experience even more delightful.)

So have a happy weekend – and curl up in bed or your favourite comfy chair or even take a long and lazy bubble bath with an ebook – preferably one of Rob’s or ours – and tell us all about it next week.

And to brighten up your weekend even more, here’s another James Whitworth cartoon strip for you that sums up Rob’s attitude perfectly.

As well as covering a series of humorous novels by Peter Maughan for BeWrite Books, James also produces a weekly 'Rudge' strip for A SITE FOR US OLD SCHOOL FLEET STREET STEET ROGUES AND GENTLEMEN RANTERS WHO WIND DOWN OUR FRIDAYS AT THE LAST PUB IN THE STREET.

That Website is also the home for Revel Barker Publishing and a catalogue of fascinating and hilarious print books BeWrite Books is releasing in all ebook editions at regular intervals under the new genre title, Hack-Lit.

 Love, luck and happy weekend. Neil et al at BeWrite Books and, of course, Rob J Sawyer

Available in print and ebook formats at all online stores

THE SKY'S THE LIMITROPHE!

BeWrite Books has grown much too big for its britches ... and that’s good news all round.

On October 1 we launch a vital new imprint: LIMITROPHE PUBLISHING. (Interesting and fun etymology as an addendum to this article.)

It’s a publisher-to-publisher project that will benefit those many, many larger publishing houses not yet fully geared to in-house ebook production and effective digital distribution. It won’t cost them a red cent at any stage, but it will be invaluable on a generous royalty basis that’s hugely in their favour.

And it will provide an important capital injection to BeWrite Books itself to more fully develop in areas like marketing and promotion of BB’s own titles and authors, and perhaps even to hire much-needed additional qualified and experienced editorial staff to supplement our currently tiny team of three work-hardened pros and, thereby, increase annual release output. Everyone’s a winner.

All’s now in place for the launch of Limitrophe Publishing.

A professional and highly experienced copy-editing core team of three specialist editors has been signed and is on stand-by. Formal proposals – strictly by invitation only – are already winging their way around the publisphere. (No interesting etymology to ‘publisphere’, I’m afraid; merely a handy word I just this moment conjured up as I typed to encapsulate a broad idea. It's a bad habit of mine. Sorry.)

Several weeks ago, WWW.LIMITROPHEPUBLISHING.COM (see next paragraph), .net and .org, were claimed, bought, parked, content-complete and ready to go live later this month. Limitrophe Publishing is already fully registered by our legal representative as an imprint of BeWrite Books, Canada and BeWrite Books LLC, USA, and therefore internationally recognised on launch.

So watch this space for progress reports. And you’ll be able to read exactly how it all works in a week or so when the websites go live. (They currently re-direct automatically to the existing BeWrite Books website.)

Just for interest to those who know us – our BB author pals and others – this whole thing came about by sheer fluke of fortune.

For the past two years, tech and design partner Tony and I have waived all our own BeWrite Books royalties and ploughed these and healthy company profits from all sources back into expensive, state-of-the-art development in the digital field. Thank ye gods for generous, supportive, patient and enthusiastic wives, eh, chaps? Calina and Skovia are our superstars. May ye same gods, bless ’em both.

These developments include specialist hardware and software – which cost an arm and a leg (etymology of term available on request) – retained professional services, brilliant, but expensive, accountancy software and professional hands-on bookkeeping maintenance on a retained monthly basis to keep ahead of royalty payment deadlines, other retained professional services, and legal and administrative costs involved in gaining additional USA registration last year to deal directly with the major ebook retail stores, handle our own company tax commitments, and to develop an independent and broad distribution base to beat even Ingram’s massive digital distribution scheme.

Whereas in the previous decade we achieved a high of only 5% digital against 95% print in sales, 2011 has startled us with a remarkable swing: Ebooks now account for a whopping 98% of BeWrite Books’ sales ... without print sales (admittedly, always modest at best) taking any apparent hit.

And that’s when we realised that we’d grown too big for those britches of ours.

BeWrite Books’ own rigorous submissions selection process and small but nit-pickingly professional editorial team can effectively release only a dozen or so exclusive new titles each year right now, you see. The almost incredible resources we’ve recently built from the ground up in technology, digital expertise and distribution can be used to only 2% capacity by BeWrite Books itself. That ain’t a typo, chums ... two percent, not twenty percent!

So we set ourselves the brain-teasing task of finding a way to put our untapped potential to effective and constructive use.

Another early happy toss of the coin was when we then realised that we’d already run a successful feasibility study on the as yet undreamed of Limitrophe Publishing venture in teaming with a small niche publisher in 2010 to produce ebook editions of its print title catalogue and in our first ebook-only project with an individual author a year ago whose own major publishing house admitted they had not the resources to take her work to ebook themselves.

Our BeWrite Books ebook editions of that title in its very first quarter (when not all returns were in) looked well set to rival and even later overtake sales of the traditionally published and marketed print equivalent over the entire period since its first hardback release almost two years earlier. The niche publisher has seen digital success it had never considered before.

And that, in a nut shell, lads and lassies, is how Limitrophe Publishing was accidentally conceived ... It was as unexpected as the best and most welcome of babies (and I should know; that’s how my pair, Alex and Kirsten Marr, made their entrance to the world thirty-eight and thirty-five years ago – a hard double-act to beat).

If anyone's ever wondered about my secondary byline for the past coming-up four decades, 'Alexander James', by the way, that's about my son, Alexander James Taylor Marr (Sandy in the family). Sandy's and Kirsty's wonderful mum, Angie, my ex wife, and her equally wonderful husband of almost thirty years, John (very much a partner-dad and granddad to the new generation), are our closest friends. We live for their regular visits to Chez Skovia & Neil here in the south of France. The very best of good company.

And older BB friends will remember Alex as a key member of the original BeWrite Books team from the turn of the millennium, astutely handling final proofing with an impressively well-read head and a natural hawk-eye, and much of the technical and administrative tasks as the IT professional he is.

Along the way, there has been generous and astute guidance from highly-placed professional friends in the big publishing league who helped hone our rough Limitrophe Publishing idea to a keen edge.

Too many mentors to fully credit here, but they’re all in regular touch on a personal basis as old pals and know how much we appreciate their guidance and generosity of spirit.

The core trio of thoroughly pro and highly experienced copy-editors is also made up of old and trusted colleagues in the business, one going back to the sixties when we shared a desk as publishing cubs, writing and editing. I've long known the quality of their work, their reliability and accuracy. And their hearts are entirely in the Limitrophe Publishing project. For their advice and faith, we have them to thank, too, for turning a wild notion into a reality.

So, you’ve just became the very first outside the team itself to know about Limitrophe Publishing.

We reckon we owe you that for your own loyalty to good ol' BeWrite Books.

If you’ve puzzled this year as to why Tony and I might sometimes come across by phone and even in emails as tired, weary and pretty well jiggered, it’s because of working shifts of up to forty-eight hours a stretch, without even butty breaks, to keep ahead of BeWrite Books' requirements and to kick-start Limitrophe Publishing. 

It’s a minimum of a 16x7 job. As I post this blog, I’m already twenty-two hours into a current working stretch with a couple more hours to follow before I can hit the sack for forty winks. Tony’s graphics will be inserted at around his own twelve-hour stint mark, again with many more hours to come at his end, and nine hours behind me as the clock flies. Sometimes time zone differences are a bonus to us. We can often work together in 'real time'.

Should you wish to curse Limitrophe Publishing for any reason, please do so using its correct pronunciation after the initial outrageous explicative. It’s (roughly) ‘limmutroff’ (adj\ li-mə-trōf).

If you’re not clear on the true definition of ‘limitrophe’ I’d highly recommend a coffee (or stiff whisky) break and a chuckle over the below from everybody’s friend and world famous etymologist Michael Quinion of World Wide Words.

Best wishes and happy weekend. Neil, Tony et al at BB/LP

FROM MICHAEL QUINION. His weekly newsletter is a source of Saturday fascination to me. You’d love it. And it’s a free sign-up to boot (etymology of expression available on request). His books are an educational scream, too.

LIMITROPHE

Michael Quinion 

A young guest in the ancient and renowned Lexicophilia Club, who ought to know better, buttonholes the oldest member in seclusion of the James Murray Memorial Library.
      

‘Limitrophe? That looks foreign.’
     

‘Your perspicacity astounds me. It was introduced from French by English members of the diplomatic corps in the eighteenth century, when – as you may know – French was the language of diplomacy.’
      

‘So what did French diplomats mean by it?’
      

‘Situated on the frontier; bordering another country. As a noun, border-land.’
     

‘And where did the French get it?’
     

‘From Latin “limitrophus”, lands set apart for the support of troops on the frontier.’
      

‘I don't have any Latin. It’s all Greek to me.’
      

‘Astonishing. You’re actually half right. The second part is indeed Greek (“trophos”, supporting) but the first is from Latin “limes”, a limit or boundary.’
      

‘That’s enough etymology, thanks.’

‘Within these walls, young man, we can never have too much etymology.’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’
     

‘Why am I not surprised? But your observation is accidentally perspicacious. Unlike French, where it’s often to be encountered, it has always been rare in English.’

‘Examples please.’
     

‘Pass me Sir James Rennell Rodd’s Social and Diplomatic Memories, if you’d be so kind. Thank you. Grand man. First-class diplomat. Got his KCMG for sorting out that nasty Fashoda business in Africa in 1899.

‘Here we are: “Countries limitrophe with Germany, such as Belgium, Holland, and perhaps Denmark”. 

‘And I can quote from a work by another diplomatist, Sir Charles Eliot. In his Hinduism and Buddhism – it appeared in 1921 in three volumes, absolutely splendid stuff, his life’s work, you know – he wrote: “In the reign of Mithridates the Parthian Empire was limitrophe with India and possibly his authority extended beyond the Indus”.’
     

‘These are very old.’
     

‘Not as old as all that, young man. But I take your point. It has always been rather a scarce word and it seems to have fallen even further out of favour during the past century.’
      

‘So nobody uses it these days?’
      

‘It’s still to be found if you would take the trouble to look. For example, “This belt of sovereign states is the Great Limitrophe: a kind of buffer zone separating Russia from the true centers of both European and Asian civilization”. That’s from Russia in Search of Itself, by James H Billington, published in 2004.

‘And here’s another, from 2008: “This stretch of international boundary, which the Colorado River forms, is known as the limitrophe”. That’s in Ecosystem-based Management in the Colorado River Delta, whatever that means, by Karen Hae-Myung Hyun.’
      

‘Why don’t we just say “border-land” or “bordering”?’
      

‘We would then lose an elegant word with which we can illuminate our discussions of political and economic geography.’
      

‘Show off your obscure learning, you mean?’
      

‘Impertinent whippersnapper! Enough! Away with you!’

Michael hadn’t heard of Limitrophe Publishing when he wrote that, and I didn’t know of his colourful definition when I hit on the word as fitting for our new imprint and Tony became enthusiastic about the title. When Michael published it, I wrote to him to tell him of our plans in the pipeline. For once, he was speechless. Just another happy accident.

And that’s all, folks. Neil

PIPPED AT THE POST -- BUT PROUD TO TAKE SECOND PLACE TO FRONT-RUNNER ROZ MORRIS

Roz Morris

C’mon, it happens to the best of us ... beaten by a nose to a new idea. But BeWrite Books is proud to have run a close second to a thoroughbred like the admirable, best-seller Roz Morris. She gets a firm and manly handshake from us all on the BB team, and a continental peck on each cheek from me.

She and we had the same idea for running ebooks in specially constructed, bite-sized chunks, building up over a short period to a completed novel. But while we were still preparing the first six titles to launch what we’re calling our ‘Build-Your-Book’ project, Roz released her own four-episode novel, MY MEMORIES OF A FUTURE LIFE, in a similar way earlier this week, with Episode One, The Red Season.

In this special BB blog edition, she explains how she did it. And – more importantly – how you can do it, too. Now that’s generosity in our book. A bit like the winning jockey sharing his first-place bonus with the second-runner.

She’s like that, is Roz. That’s why her last book, NAIL YOUR NOVEL, was a non-fiction piece, crammed with advice for authors, established and – with special focus upon – those in development. And she also runs a regular advice blog for authors and developing authors HERE.

And that’s nothing new for this London-based word artist. She’s spent nearly two decades of experience writing novels in helping floundering authors find their way. She has been a senior book doctor for a major literary consultancy in the UK and now consults independently – so if you have a project that you need help with, Roz may well be your huckleberry.

She writes fiction under her own name, freelance edits a medical magazine and has ghost-written best-selling fiction for high-profile ‘writers’ with major publishers, including Random House, Puffin and Mammoth.

When left to her own devices, she writes quirky literary fiction and she now has two novels completed ... refreshingly, under her own name at last.

My Memories of a Future Life is for the adult market. It’s represented by Jane Conway-Gordon Associates and is released as four linked but self-contained novellas of 25,000 words each, constructed to build to a completed book as she releases pre-prepared new episodes. It was released this week (dammit!). Episode Two will be published on September 5, Episode Three on September 12, and the final episode on September 19.

Her next novel, Life Form 3, is for Young Adult readers and is represented by Piers Blofeld of Sheil Land Associates. Her current project, Echo, is also for YA readers. Both are far along the pipeline to release. Also My Memories of a Future Life will be released in print form when completed in ebook editions, but no fixed date yet for release. Won't be long in coming, though. Watch this space!

A fellow-former journalist, Roz has eleven published novels under her belt, ghost-written for others whose names they now carry. As always in ghosting, these novels and their credited ‘authors’ are confidential. That’s the deal. I’ve been there myself. But it can be darned frustrating when the books you wrote become huge best-sellers hitting above the half-million sales mark as many of Roz’s did. Mine achieved humbler sales and were all non-fiction.

She says, ‘When I was still a journalist, I decided I’d far prefer making stories up than reporting the chance realities of other people’s lives and situations – the most insignificant fact of a news story would fill my brain with little bees, buzzing, ‘what if …’

“But writing fiction isn’t just inspiration, there’s a lot of craft involved. I am endlessly interested in this process of writing, in how people do it – and in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I love working with stories – and that’s why I started critiquing the work of others as well as writing my own.

“Structure is the secret to knowing whether your story works. It’s why splitting my novel into episodes has given me a useful new tool.

“The most important F of FAQs that I’m being asked at the moment is this: was it easy to split my new novel into four parts? Did I originally write it that way?

“When I first had the idea of releasing My Memories of a Future Life as episodes I was wondering how on earth it would work. Perhaps it wouldn’t go.

“But when I divided it according to page numbers I found that, give or take a few, at the end of each quarter was a major shift. The stakes changed, or what the narrator wanted changed. I did some minor tweaking to punch up the episode beginnings but the structure was there already.”

So onto Roz’s guest article for BeWrite Books …

***

CAN YOU SPLIT YOUR NOVEL INTO FOUR EQUAL PARTS
By Roz Morris

If you’re not planning to release your novel in episodes, why is this relevant to you? Because all stories need these major shifts.

On the count of three …

Hollywood talks about the three-act-structure three-act structure for movies. Act 1, the first quarter, is the set-up with the inciting incident. Act 2, the second two quarters, is where the problem is being actively tackled and confronted. Act 3, the last quarter, is the resolution.

Now Hollywood movies have pretty formalised structures, but that’s not just because they like formulae. The three-act structure isn’t simply a matter of convention. It comes from the way the brain naturally looks for change – and the way it likes to see a problem explored.

For the character’s journey to feel significant, we have to feel we have gone a long way between start and finish. That’s not done by dragging the reader through a lot of pages. It’s not done with the number of characters you whirl in and out, or the number of locations you visit like a James Bond movie. It’s done with an internal shift for the character. It’s done by altering what the journey means.

The stakes can’t be the same at the end of the story as they were at the start. The character must change what they want.

Three acts, four episodes?

Hang on; classic Hollywood structure is three acts. I’ve got four.

That’s because there’s also the ‘midpoint’.

I refer you to Blake Snyder, of Save the Cat fame. He explains that in his early days of movie-writing, he used to tape movies on C90 cassettes and listen to them in the car. At forty-five minutes, where he turned over the cassette, he realised the most compelling movies had another crucial change – that midpoint.

The midpoint shifted the whole dynamic of the story. It was the threshold between the beginning and the beginning of the end. It was, to quote the great man, ‘the point where the fun and games are over and it’s back to the serious story.’ (And fortunately I had that too.)

Once you understand what the reader psychologically wants at each point of the story, you can give it a really thorough workout.

Have you focused your story wrongly? 

You can even tell if you’ve misunderstood it. Writing teacher and author Darcy Pattison discovered that her second act began far too late, did some soul-searching and realised she was focusing the story wrongly. She thought she was writing a quest, but her structure told her that her story was actually about the characters maturing. When she revised with this new focus in mind, it helped her create a tighter, more compelling manuscript.

From now on, I’m going to try splitting all my novels into four.

And as for the four-part serialisation? My agent at Sheil Land is watching keenly to see how it works as a model for ebook releases of their own. Yes, folks. Writers here and now are setting the agenda for the future of the industry.

***

Many, many thanks Roz. That’s what building your book is all about, people: careful structuring!

And, if you create a four-act novel, it will be satisfying as a complete read and perfect for the episodic release treatment Roz employed and on which we’ve almost completed the first half dozen of our own from existing titles in the BeWrite Books catalogue.

I love the neat way, too that Roz so simply and briefly side-notes My Memories of a Future Life:

 
If you were somebody’s past life …
 

What echoes would you leave in their soul? Could they be the answers you need now?
 
It’s a question Carol never expected to face. She’s a gifted musician who needs nothing more than her piano and certainly doesn’t believe she’s lived before. But forced by injury to stop playing, she fears her life may be over. Enter her soulmate Andreq: healer, liar, fraud and loyal friend. Is he her future incarnation or a psychological figment? And can his story help her discover how to live now?
 
A novel in the vein of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Vertigo and The Gargoyle, 'My Memories of a Future Life' is much more than a twist on the traditional reincarnation tale. It is a multi-layered story of souls on conjoined journeys – in real time and across the centuries. It’s a provocative study of the shadows we don’t know are driving our lives, from our own pasts and from the people with us right now. Like Peter Shaffer’s plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus, it asks questions about what we believe, what we create and how we scare and heal each other.

Above all, it’s the story of how one lost soul searches for where she now belongs.

If you like audio-books: You can listen to the first four chapters of My Memories of a Future Life HERE (HEAR?)

And that’s all folks ... for now. And food for much thought, I’m sure you’ll agree. Catch you all soon.

Thanks again to Roz Morris. Happy weekend to everyone everywhere. And we appreciate your visit and your precious reading time. Usefully spent, eh? Bestests. Roz, Neil et al at BB